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THE  LIBRARY  OF  THE 

UNIVERSITY  OF 

NORTH  CAROLINA 


ENDOWED  BY  THE 

DIALECTIC  AND  PHILANTHROPIC 

SOCIETIES 


UNIVERSITY  OF  N.C.  AT  CHAPEL  HILL 


00010103764 


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i  *    '9* 

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2  8  2011 

Form  No.  513 

Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 

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http://www.archive.org/details/boystowndescribeOOhowe 


"  ONE    DAY  HE   CAME    UP   TO   MY   BOY  WHERE   HE   SAT   FISHING. 

[See  p.  66  ] 


/  -  <?  "3" 


A  BOY'S  TOWN 


DESCRIBED    FOR   "HARPER'S   YOUNG    PEOPLE' 


BY 


W.  D.  HOWELLS 

AUTHOR  OF  "  THE  SHADOW  OF  A  DREAM  "  "  APRIL  HOPES ' 
"A  HAZARD  OF  NEW  FORTUNES"  ETC. 


ILLUSTRATED 


NEW    YORK    AND    LONDON 
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Copyright,  Ib90,i9i8,by  William  Dkaj*  Howklls. 


PRINTED  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES   OF  AMERICA 
U-T 


CONTENTS. 


OH4FTBK  PAGE 

I.  Earliest  Experiences 1 

II.  Home  and  Kindred 10 

III.  The  River 24 

IV.  The  Canal  and  its  Basin 36 

V.  The  Hydraulic  and  its  Reservoirs.— Old 

River 45 

VI.  Schools  and  Teachers 53 

VII.  Manners  and  Customs 67 

VIII.  Plays  and  Pastimes 80 

IX.  Circuses  and  Shows 93 

X.   HlGHDAYS  AND  HOLIDAYS 110 

XI.  Musters  and  Elections 121 

XII.  Pets 133 

XIII.  Guns  and  Gunning 148 

XIV.  Foraging 161 

XV.  My  Boy 171 

XVI.  Other  Boys 183 

XVII.  Fantasees  and  Superstitions 197 

XVIII.  The  Nature  op  Boys 205 

XIX.  The  Town  Itself 215 

XX.  Traits  and  Characters 228 

XXI.  Last  Days 237 


583241 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 


"  ONE  DAY  HE  CAME  UP  TO  MY  BOY 

WHERE  HE  SAT  FISHING "       .     .     Frontispiece. 

THE  "  FIRST  LOCK  " Facing  p.      2 

"  THE     PASSENGER    IS     A     ONE-LEGGED 

MAN" "  8 

"  RUN,   RUN !  THE   CONSTABLE   WILL 

CATCH  YOU!" "      18 

"  HE  TOLD  THEM  THAT  HE  HAD  GOT 

THEM  NOW  " "     44 

"  THAT  HONOR  WAS  RESERVED  FOR  MEN 

OF  THE  KIND  I  HAVE  MENTIONED  "  "  50 

"  A  CITIZEN'S  CHARACTER  FOR  CLEVER- 
NESS OR  MEANNESS  WAS  FIXED  BY 
HIS  WALKING  ROUND  OR  OVER  THE 
RINGS  " "  82 

KITE  TIME "  92 

"  THE    BOYS    BEGAN   TO    CELEBRATE   IT 

WITH  GUNS  AND  PISTOLS  "...  "  1 10 

THE  "  BUTLER  GUARDS  " "  122 

"  ALL    AT    ONCE    THERE    THE    INDIANS 

WERE  " "  I50 

FORAGING         "  168 

"  THE  BEACON  OF  DEATH  " "  iSo 

"  HE    ALWAYS    RAN    BY   THE    PLACE   AS 

FAST  AS  HE  COULD  " "  198 

'  THE  ARTIST  SEEMED  SATISFIED  HIM- 
SELF " "  220 

"  MY    BOY    REMEMBERS    COMING    FROM 

CINCINNATI  IN  THE  STAGE  "      .     .  "  224 


A  BOY'S   TOWN. 


i. 

EARLIEST   EXPERIENCES. 

I  call  it  a  Boy's  Town  because  I  wish  it  to  appear 
to  the  reader  as  a  town  appears  to  a  boy  from  his  third 
to  his  eleventh  year,  when  he  seldom,  if  ever,  catches  a 
glimpse  of  life  much  higher  than  the  middle  of  a  man, 
and  has  the  most  distorted  and  mistaken  views  of  most 
things.  He  may  then  indeed  look  up  to  the  sky,  and 
see  heaven  open,  and  angels  ascending  and  descending; 
but  he  can  only  grope  about  on  the  earth,  and  he  knows 
nothing  aright  that  goes  on  there  beyond  his  small 
boy's  world.  Some  people  remain  in  this  condition  as 
long  as  they  live,  and  keep  the  ignorance  of  childhood, 
after  they  have  lost  its  innocence ;  heaven  has  been 
shut,  but  the  earth  is  still  a  prison  to  them.  These 
will  not  know  what  I  mean  by  much  that  I  shall  have 
to  say ;  but  I  hope  that  the  ungrown-up  children  will, 
and  that  the  boys  who  read  Harper's  Young  People 
will  like  to  know  what  a  boy  of  forty  years  ago  was 
like,  even  if  he  had  no  very  exciting  adventures  or 
thread-bare  escapes ;  perhaps  I  mean  hair-breadth  es- 
capes ;  but  it  is  the  same  thing — they  have  been  used 
so  often.     I  shall  try  to  describe  him  very  minutely  in 


2  A   BOY'S   TOWN. 

his  daily  doings  and  dreamings,  and  it  may  amuse  them 
to  compare  these  doings  and  dreamings  with  their  own. 
For  convenience,  I  shall  call  this  boy,  my  boy ;  but  I 
hope  he  might  have  been  almost  anybody's  boy  ;  and  I 
mean  him  sometimes  for  a  boy  in  general,  as  well  as  a 
boy  in  particular. 

It  seems  to  me  that  my  Boy's  Town  was  a  town 
peculiarly  adapted  for  a  boy  to  be  a  boy  in.  It  had  a 
river,  the  great  Miami  River,  which  was  as  blue  as  the 
sky  wben  it  was  not  as  yellow  as  gold  ;  and  it  had  an- 
other river,  called  the  Old  River,  which  was  the  Miami's 
former  cbannel,  and  which  held  an  island  in  its  sluggish 
loop ;  the  boys  called  it  The  Island ;  and  it  must  have 
been  about  the  size  of  Australia  ;  perhaps  it  was  not  so 
large.  Then  this  town  had  a  Canal,  and  a  Canal-Basin, 
and  a  First  Lock  and  a  Second  Lock ;  you  could  walk  out 
to  the  First  Lock,  but  the  Second  Lock  was  at  the  edge  of 
the  known  world,  and,  when  my  boy  was  very  little,  the 
biggest  boy  had  never  been  beyond  it.  Then  it  had  a 
Hydraulic,  which  brought  the  waters  of  Old  River  for 
mill  power  through  the  heart  of  the  town,  from  a  Big 
Reservoir  and  a  Little  Reservoir ;  the  Big  Reservoir  was 
as  far  off  as  the  Second  Lock,  and  the  Hydraulic  ran 
under  mysterious  culverts  at  every  street-crossing.  All 
these  streams  and  courses  had  fish  in  them  at  all  seasons, 
and  all  summer  long  they  had  boys  in  them,  and  now 
and  then  a  boy  in  winter,  when  the  thin  ice  of  the  mild 
Southern  Ohio  winter  let  him  through  with  his  skates. 
Then  there  were  the  Commons ;  a  wide  expanse  of 
open  fields,  where  the  cows  were  pastured,  and  the  boys 
flew  their  kites,  and  ran  races,  and  practised  for  their 
circuses  in  the  tan-bark  rings  of  the  real  circuses. 

There  were  flocks  of  wild  ducks  on  the  Reservoirs  and 


THE    "FIRST   LOCK." 


EAELIEST  EXPEEIENOES.  3 

on  Old  River,  and  flocks  of  kildees  on  the  Commons; 
and  there  were  squirrels  in  the  woods,  where  there  was 
abundant  mast  for  the  pigs  that  ran  wild  in  them,  and 
battened  on  the  nuts  under  the  hickory-trees.  There 
were  no  other  nuts  except  walnuts,  white  and  black ;  but 
there  was  no  end  to  the  small,  sweetish  acorns,  which  the 
boys  called  chinquepins ;  they  ate  them,  but  I  doubt  if 
they  liked  them,  except  as  boys  like  anything  to  eat. 
In  the  vast  cornfields  stretching  everywhere  along  the 
river  levels  there  were  quails ;  and  rabbits  in  the  sumac 
thickets  and  turnip  patches.  There  were  places  to 
swim,  to  fish,  to  hunt,  to  skate ;  if  there  were  no  hills 
for  coasting,  that  was  not  so  much  loss,  for  there  was 
very  little  snow,  and  it  melted  in  a  day  or  two  after  it 
fell.  But  besides  these  natural  advantages  for  boys, 
there  were  artificial  opportunities  which  the  boys  treat- 
ed as  if  they  had  been  made  for  them ;  grist-mills  on 
the  river  and  canal,  cotton-factories  and  saw-mills  on  the 
Hydraulic,  iron-founderies  by  the  Commons,  breweries 
on  the  river-bank,  and  not  too  many  school-houses.  I 
must  not  forget  the  market-house,  with  its  public  mar- 
ket twice  a  week,  and  its  long  rows  of  market-wagons, 
stretching  on  either  side  of  High  Street  in  the  dim  light 
of  the  summer  dawn  or  the  cold  sun  of  the  winter  noon. 
The  place  had  its  brief  history  running  back  to  the 
beginning  of  the  century.  Mad  Anthony  Wayne  en- 
camped on  its  site  when  he  went  north  to  avenge  St. 
Clair's  defeat  on  the  Indians ;  it  was  at  first  a  fort,  and 
it  remained  a  military  post  until  the  tribes  about  were 
reduced,  and  a  fort  was  no  longer  needed.  To  this  time 
belonged  a  tragedy,  which  my  boy  knew  of  vaguely 
when  he  was  a  child.  Two  of  the  soldiers  were  sen- 
tenced to  be  hanged  for  desertion,  and  the  officer  in 


4  A   BOY  S   TOWN. 

command  hurried  forward  the  execution,  although  an 
express  had  heen  sent  to  lay  the  case  before  the  general 
at  another  post.  The  offence  was  only  a  desertion  in 
name,  and  the  reprieve  was  promptly  granted,  but  it 
came  fifteen  minutes  too  late. 

I  believe  nothing  more  memorable  ever  happened  in 
my  Boy's  Town,  as  the  grown-up  world  counts  events ; 
but  for  the  boys  there,  every  day  was  full  of  wonder- 
ful occurrence  and  thrilling  excitement.  It  was  real- 
ly a  very  simple  little  town  of  some  three  thousand 
people,  living  for  the  most  part  in  small  one -story 
wooden  houses,  with  here  and  there  a  brick  house 
of  two  stories,  and  here  and  there  a  lingering  log- 
cabin,  when  my  boy's  father  came  to  take  charge  of  its 
Whig  newspaper  in  1840.  It  stretched  eastward  from 
the  river  to  the  Canal-Basin,  with  the  market-house, 
the  county  buildings,  and  the  stores  and  hotels  on  one 
street,  and  a  few  other  stores  and  taverns  scattering  off 
on  streets  that  branched  from  j£  to  the  southward ;  but 
all  this  was  a  vast  metropolis  to  my  boy's  fancy,  where 
he  might  get  lost — the  sum  of  all  disaster — if  he  ven- 
tured away  from  the  neighborhood  of  the  house  where 
he  first  lived,  on  its  southwestern  border.  It  was  the 
great  political  year  of  "  Tippecanoe  and  Tyler  too,"  when 
the  grandfather  of  our  President  Harrison  was  elected 
President ;  but  the  wild  hard-cider  campaign  roared  by 
my  boy's  little  life  without  leaving  a  trace  in  it,  except 
the  recollection  of  his  father  wearing  a  linsey-woolsey 
hunting-shirt,  belted  at  the  waist  and  fringed  at  the 
skirt,  as  a  Whig  who  loved  his  cause  and  honored  the 
good  old  pioneer  times  was  bound  to  do.  I  dare  say 
he  did  not  wear  it  often,  and  I  fancy  he  wore  it  then  in 
rather  an  ironical  spirit,  for  he  was  a  man  who  had  slight 


EARLIEST   EXPERIENCES.  5 

esteem  for  outward  shows  and  semblances ;  but  it  re- 
mained in  my  boy's  mind,  as  clear  a  vision  as  the  long 
cloak  of  blue  broadcloth  in  which  he  must  have  seen 
his  father  habitually.  This  cloak  was  such  a  garment 
as  people  still  drape  about  them  in  Italy,  and  men  wore 
it  in  America  then  instead  of  an  overcoat.  To  get  un- 
de«r  its  border,  and  hold  by  his  father's  hand  in  the 
warmth  and  dark  it  made  around  him  was  something 
that  the  boy  thought  a  great  privilege,  and  that  brought 
him  a  sense  of  mystery  and  security  at  once  that  noth- 
ing else  could  ever  give.  He  used  to  be  allowed  to  go 
as  far  as  the  street  corner,  to  enjoy  it,  when  his  father 
came  home  from  the  printing-office  in  the  evening ;  and 
one  evening,  never  to  be  forgotten,  after  he  had  long 
been  teasing  for  a  little  axe  he  wanted,  he  divined  that 
his  father  had  something  hidden  under  his  cloak.  Per- 
haps he  asked  him  as  usual  whether  he  had  brought 
him  the  little  axe,  but  his  father  said,  "  Feel,  feel !"  and 
he  found  his  treasure.  He  ran  home  and  fell  upon  the 
woodpile  with  it,  in  a  zeal  that  proposed  to  leave  noth- 
ing but  chips ;  before  he  had  gone  far  he  learned  that 
this  is  a  world  in  which  you  can  sate  but  never  satisfy 
yourself  with  anything,  even  hard  work.  Some  of  my 
readers  may  have  found  that  out,  too ;  at  any  rate,  my 
boy  did  not  keep  the  family  in  firewood  with  his  axe, 
and  his  abiding  association  with  it  in  after-life  was  a 
feeling  of  weariness  and  disgust;  so  I  fancy  that  he 
must  have  been  laughed  at  for  it.  Besides  the  surfeit 
of  this  little  axe,  he  could  recall,  when  he  grew  up,  the 
glory  of  wearing  his  Philadelphia  suit,  which  one  of  his 
grandmothers  had  brought  him  Over  the  Mountains,  as 
people  said  in  those  days,  after  a  visit  to  her  Pennsyl- 
vania German  kindred  beyond  the  Alleghanies.    It  was 


6  A  boy's  town. 

of  some  beatified  plaid  in  gay  colors,  and  when  once  it 
was  put  on  it  never  was  laid  aside  for  any  other  suit 
till  it  was  worn  out.  It  testified  unmistakably  to  the 
boy's  advance  in  years  beyond  the  shameful  period  of 
skirts ;  and  no  doubt  it  commended  him  to  the  shad- 
owy little  girl  who  lived  so  far  away  as  to  be  even  be- 
yond the  street-corner,  and  who  used  to  look  for  him,  as 
he  passed,  through  the  palings  of  a  garden  among  holly- 
hocks and  four-o'clocks. 

The  Young  People  may  have  heard  it  said  that  a  sav- 
age is  a  grown-up  child,  but  it  seems  to  me  even  more 
true  that  a  child  is  a  savage.  Like  the  savage,  he  dwells 
on  an  earth  round  which  the  whole  solar  system  re- 
volves, and  he  is  himself  the  centre  of  all  life  on  the 
earth.  It  has  no  meaning  but  as  it  relates  to  him ;  it 
is  for  his  pleasure,  his  use ;  it  is  for  his  pain  and  his 
abuse.  It  is  full  of  sights,  sounds,  sensations,  for  his 
delight  alone,  for  his  suffering  alone.  He  lives  under 
a  law  of  favor  or  of  fear,  but  never  of  justice,  and  the 
savage  does  not  make  a  crueller  idol  than  the  child 
makes  of  the  Power  ruling  over  his  world  and  having 
him  for  its  chief  concern.  What  remained  to  my  boy 
of  that  faint  childish  consciousness  was  the  idea  of  some 
sort  of  supernal  Being  who  abode  in  the  skies  for  his 
advantage  and  disadvantage,  and  made  winter  and  sum- 
mer, wet  weather  and  dry,  with  an  eye  single  to  him ; 
of  a  family  of  which  he  was  necessarily  the  centre,  and 
of  that  far,  vast,  unknown  Town,  lurking  all  round  him, 
and  existing  on  account  of  him  if  not  because  of  him. 
So,  unless  I  manage  to  treat  my  Boy's  Town  as  a  part 
of  his  own  being,  I  shall  not  make  others  know  it  just 
as  he  knew  it. 

Some  of  his  memories  reach  a  time  earlier  than  his 


EABLIEST  EXPERIENCES.  7 

third  year,  and  relate  to  the  little  Ohio  River  hamlet 
where  he  was  born,  and  where  his  mother's  people,  who 
were  river-faring  folk,  all  lived.  Every  two  or  three 
years  the  river  rose  and  flooded  the  village;  and  his 
grandmother's  household  was  taken  out  of  the  second- 
story  window  in  a  skiff ;  but  no  one  minded  a  trivial 
inconvenience  like  that,  any  more  than  the  Romans 
have  minded  the  annual  freshet  of  the  Tiber  for  the 
last  three  or  four  thousand  years.  When  the  waters 
went  down  the  family  returned  and  scrubbed  out  the 
five  or  six  inches  of  rich  mud  they  had  left.  In  the 
meantime,  it  was  a  godsend  to  all  boys  of  an  age  to 
enjoy  it ;  but  it  was  nothing  out  of  the  order  of  Provi- 
dence. So,  if  my  boy  ever  saw  a  freshet,  it  naturally 
made  no  impression  upon  him.  What  he  remembered  was 
something  much  more  important,  and  that  was  waking 
up  one  morning  and  seeing  a  peach-tree  in  bloom  through 
the  window  beside  his  bed ;  and  he  was  always  glad  that 
this  vision  of  heauty  was  his  very  earliest  memory.  All 
his  life  he  has  never  seen  a  peach-tree  in  bloom  without 
a  swelling  of  the  heart,  without  some  fleeting  sense  that 

"Heaven  lies  about  us  in  our  infancy." 

Over  the  spot  where  the  little  house  once  stood,  a 
railroad  has  drawn  its  erasing  lines,  and  the  house  itself 
was  long  since  taken  down  and  built  up  brick  by  brick 
in  quite  another  place ;  but  the  blooming  peach-tree 
glows  before  his  childish  eyes  untouched  by  time  or 
change.  The  tender,  pathetic  pink  of  its  flowers  re- 
peated itself  many  long  years  afterwards  in  the  paler 
tints  of  the  almond  blossoms  in  Italy,  but  always  with 
a  reminiscence  of  that  dim  past,  and  the  little  coal- 
smoky  town  on  the  banks  of  the  Ohio. 


8  A   BOY  S   TOWtf. 

Perversely  blended  with  that  vision  of  the  blooming 
peach  is  a  glimpse  of  a  pet  deer  in  the  kitchen  of  the 
same  little  house,  with  his  head  up  and  his  antlers  erect, 
as  if  he  meditated  offence.  My  boy  might  never  have 
seen  him  so ;  he  may  have  had  the  vision  at  second 
hand ;  but  it  is  certain  that  there  was  a  pet  deer  in  the 
family,  and  that  he  was  as  likely  to  have  come  into  the 
kitchen  by  the  window  as  by  the  door.  One  of  the 
boy's  uncles  had  seen  this  deer  swimming  the  Missis- 
sippi, far  to  the  southward,  and  had  sent  out  a  yawl 
and  captured  him,  and  brought  him  home.  He  began 
a  checkered  career  of  uselessness  when  they  were  fer- 
rying him  over  from  Wheeling  in  a  skiff,  by  trying  to 
help  wear  the  pantaloons  of  the  boy  who  was  holding 
him ;  he  put  one  of  his  fore-legs  in  at  the  watch-pocket ; 
but  it  was  disagreeable  to  the  boy  and  ruinous  to  the 
trousers.  He  grew  very  tame,  and  butted  children  over, 
right  and  left,  in  the  village  streets  ;  and  he  behaved  like 
one  of  the  family  whenever  he  got  into  a  house ;  he  ate 
the  sugar  out  of  the  bowl  on  the  table,  and  plundered 
the  pantry  of  its  sweet  cakes.  One  day  a  dog  got  after 
him,  and  he  jumped  over  the  river-bank  and  broke  his 
leg,  and  had  to  be  shot. 

Besides  the  peach-tree  and  the  pet  deer  there  was  only 
one  other  thing  that  my  boy  could  remember,  or  seem  to 
remember,  of  the  few  years  before  he  came  to  the  Boy's 
Town.  He  is  on  the  steamboat  which  is  carrying  the 
family  down  the  Ohio  Eiver  to  Cincinnati,  on  their  way 
to  the  Boy's  Town,  and  he  is  kneeling  on  the  window- 
seat  in  the  ladies'  cabin  at  the  stern  of  the  boat,  watch- 
ing the  rain  fall  into  the  swirling  yellow  river  and  make 
the  little  men  jump  up  from  the  water  with  its  pelting 
drops.     He  knows  that  the  boat  is  standing  still,  and 


"THE  PASSENGER   TS   A    ONE-LEGGED   MAN. 


EAKLIEST   EXPERIENCES.  9 

they  are  bringing  off  a  passenger  to  it  in  a  yawl,  as 
they  used  to  do  on  the  Western  rivers  when  they  were 
hailed  from  some  place  where  there  was  no  wharf-boat. 
If  they  were  going  down  stream,  they  turned  the  boat 
and  headed  up  the  river,  and  then  with  a  great  deal  of 
scurrying  about  among  the  deck-hands,  and  swearing 
among  the  mates,  they  sent  the  yawl  ashore,  and  hus- 
tled the  passenger  on  board.  In  the  case  which  my 
boy  seemed  to  remember,  the  passenger  is  a  one-legged 
man,  and  he  is  standing  in  the  yawl,  with  his  crutch 
under  his  arm,  and  his  cane  in  his  other  hand  ;  his  fam- 
ily must  be  watching  him  from  the  house.  When  the 
yawl  comes  alongside  he  tries  to  step  aboard  the  steam- 
boat, but  he  misses  his  footing  and  slips  into  the  yellow 
river,  and  vanishes  softly.  It  is  all  so  smooth  and  easy, 
and  it  is  as  curious  as  the  little  men  jumping  up  from 
the  rain-drops.  What  made  my  boy  think  when  he 
grew  a  man  that  this  was  truly  a  memory  was  that  he 
remembered  nothing  else  of  the  incident,  nothing  what- 
ever after  the  man  went  down  in  the  water,  though 
there  must  have  been  a  great  and  painful  tumult,  and 
a  vain  search  for  him.  His  drowning  had  exactly  the 
value  in  the  child's  mind  that  the  jumping  up  of  the 
little  men  had,  neither  more  nor  less. 


II. 

HOME   AND   KINDRED. 

As  the  Boy's  Town  was,  in  one  sense,  merely  a  part 
of  the  boy,  I  think  I  had  better  tell  something  about 
my  boy's  family  first,  and  the  influences  that  formed 
his  character,  so  that  the  reader  can  be  a  boy  with 
him  there  on  the  intimate  terms  which  are  the  only 
terms  of  true  friendship.  His  great-grandfather  was  a 
prosperous  manufacturer  of  Welsh  flannels,  who  had 
founded  his  industry  in  a  pretty  town  called  The  Hay, 
on  the  river  "Wye,  in  South  Wales,  where  the  boy  saw 
one  of  his  mills,  still  making  Welsh  flannels,  when  he 
visited  his  father's  birthplace  a  few  years  ago.  This 
great-grandfather  was  a  Friend  by  Convincement,  as  the 
Quakers  say ;  that  is,  he  was  a  convert,  and  not  a  born 
Friend,  and  he  had  the  zeal  of  a  convert.  He  loved 
equality  and  fraternity,  and  he  came  out  to  America 
towards  the  close  of  the  last  century  to  prospect  for 
these  as  well  as  for  a  good  location  to  manufacture 
Welsh  flannels ;  but  after  being  presented  to  Wash- 
ington, then  President,  at  Philadelphia,  and  buying  a 
tract  of  land  somewhere  near  the  District  of  Columbia, 
his  phantom  rolls  a  shadowy  barrel  of  dollars  on  board 
ship  at  Baltimore,  and  sails  back  in  the  Flying  Dutch- 
man to  South  Wales.  I  fancy,  from  the  tradition  of 
the  dollars,  that  he  had  made  good  affairs  here  with 
the  stock  of  flannels  he  brought  over  with  him ;  but  all 


HOME   AND   KINDRED.  11 

is  rather  uncertain  about  him,  especially  the  land  he 
bought,  though  the  story  of  it  is  pretty  sure  to  fire  some 
descendant  of  his  in  each  new  generation  with  the  wish 
to  go  down  to  Washington,  and  oust  the  people  there 
who  have  unrightfully  squatted  on  the  ancestral  prop- 
erty. What  is  unquestionable  is  that  this  old  gentle- 
man went  home  and  never  came  out  here  again ;  but 
his  son,  who  had  inherited  all  his  radicalism,  sailed 
with  his  family  for  Boston  in  1808,  when  my  boy's 
father  was  a  year  old.  From  Boston  he  passed  to  one  .. 
Quaker  neighborhood  after  another,  in  New  York,  Vir- 
ginia, and  Ohio,  setting  up  the  machinery  of  woollen 
mills,  and  finally,  after  much  disastrous  experiment  in 
farming,  paused  at  the  Boy's  Town,  and  established  him- 
self in  the  drug  and  book  business :  drugs  and  books 
are  still  sold  together,  I  believe,  in  small  places.  He  had 
long  ceased  to  be  a  Quaker,  but  he  remained  a  Friend  to 
every  righteous  cause  ;  and  brought  shame  to  his  grand- 
son's soul  by  being  an  abolitionist  in  days  when  it  was 
infamy  to  wish  the  slaves  set  free.  My  boy's  father  re- 
stored his  self-respect  in  a  measure  by  being  a  Henry 
Clay  Whig,  or  a  constitutional  anti-slavery  man.  The 
grandfather  was  a  fervent  Methodist,  but  the  father,  after 
many  years  of  scepticism,  had  become  a  receiver  of  the 
doctrines  of  Emanuel  Swedenborg;  and  in  this  faith 
the  children  were  brought  up.  It  was  not  only  their 
faith,  but  their  life,  and  I  may  say  that  in  this  sense 
they  were  a  very  religious  household,  though  they  never 
went  to  church,  because  it  was  the  Old  Church.  They 
had  no  service  of  the  New  Church,  the  Swedenborgians 
were  so  few  in  the  place,  except  when  some  of  its  min- 
isters stopped  with  us  on  their  travels.  My  boy  regarded 
these  good  men  as  all  personally  sacred,  and  while  one 


12  A   BOY'S   TOWN. 

of  them  was  in  the  house  he  had  some  relief  from  the 
fear  in  which  his  days  seem  mostly  to  have  heen  passed ; 
as- if  he  were  for  the  time  being  under  the  protection  of 
a  spiritual  lightning-rod.  Their  religion  was  not  much 
understood  by  their  neighbors  of  the  Old  Church,  who 
thought  them  a  kind  of  Universalists.  But  the  boy 
once  heard  his  father  explain  to  one  of  them  that  the 
New  Church  people  believed  in  a  hell,  which  each  cast 
himself  into  if  he  loved  the  evil  rather  than  the  good, 
and  that  no  mercy  could  keep  him  out  of.  without  de- 
stroying him,  for  a  man's  love  was  his  very  self.  It 
made  his  blood  run  cold,  and  he  resolved  that  rather 
than  cast  himself  into  hell,  he  would  do  his  poor  best 
to  love  the  good.  The  children  were  taught  when  they 
teased  one  another  that  there  was  nothing  the  fiends 
so  much  delighted  in  as  teasing.  When  they  were  an- 
gry and  revengeful,  they  were  told  that  now  they  were 
calling  evil  spirits  about  them,  and  that  the  good  angels 
could  not  come  near  them  if  they  wished  while  they 
were  in  that  state.  My  boy  preferred  the  company  of 
good  angels  after  dark,  and  especially  about  bedtime, 
and  he  usually  made  the  effort  to  get  himself  into  an 
accessible  frame  of  mind  before  he  slept;  by  day  he 
felt  that  he  could  look  out  for  himself,  and  gave  way  to 
the  natural  man  like  other  boys.  I  suppose  the  children 
had  their  unwholesome  spiritual  pride  in  being  different 
from  their  fellows  in  religion ;  but,  on  the  other  hand, 
it  taught  them  not  to  fear  being:  different  from  others 
if  they  believed  themselves  right.  Perhaps  it  made  my 
boy  rather  like  it. 

The  grandfather  was  of  a  gloomy  spirit,  but  of  a  ten- 
der and  loving  heart,  whose  usual  word  with  a  child, 
when  he  caressed  it,  was  "  Poor  thing,  poor  thing  !"  as 


HOME   AND   KINDRED.  13 

if  he  could  only  pity  it ;  and  I  have  no  doubt  the  fa-» 
ther's  religion  was  a  true  affliction  to  him.  The  chil- 
dren were  taken  to  visit  their  grandmother  every  Sun- 
day noon,  and  then  the  father  and  grandfather  never 
failed  to  have  it  out  about  the  New  Church  and  the 
Old.  I  am  afraid  that  the  father  would  sometimes  for- 
get his  own  precepts,  and  tease  a  little  ;  when  the  mother 
went  with  him  she  was  sometimes  troubled  at  the 
warmth  with  which  the  controversy  raged.  The  grand- 
mother seemed  to  be  bored  by  it,  and  the  boys,  wbg, 
cared  nothing  for  salvation  in  the  abstract,  no  matter 
how  anxious  they  were  about  the  main  chance,  certainly 
shared  this  feeling  with  her.  She  was  a  pale,  little, 
large-eyed  lady,  who  always  wore  a  dress  of  Quakerish 
plainness,  with  a  white  kerchief  crossed  upon  her  breast ; 
and  her  aquiline  nose  and  jutting  chin  almost  met. 
She  was  very  good  to  the  children  and  at  these  times 
she  usually  gave  them  some  sugar-cakes,  and  sent  them 
out  in  the  yard,  where  there  was  a  young  Newfound- 
land dog,  of  loose  morals  and  no  religious  ideas,  who 
joined  them  in  having  fun,  till  the  father  came  out  and 
led  them  home.  He  would  not  have  allowed  them 
to  play  where  it  could  have  aggrieved  any  one,  for  a 
prime  article  of  his  religion  was  to  respect  the  religious 
feelings  of  others,  even  when  he  thought  them  wrong. 
But  he  would  not  suffer  the  children  to  get  the  notion 
that  they  were  guilty  of  any  deadly  crime  if  they  hap- 
pened to  come  short  of  the  conventional  standard  of 
piety.  Once,  when  their  grandfather  reported  to  him 
that  the  boys  had  been  seen  throwing  stones  on  Sunday 
at  the  body  of  a  dog  lodged  on  some  drift  in  the  river,  he 
rebuked  them  for  the  indecorum,  and  then  ended  the 
matter,  as  he  often  did,  by  saying,  "  Boys,  consider 
yourselves  soundly  thrashed." 


14  a  boy's  town. 

I  should  be  sorry  if  anything  I  have  said  should  give 
the  idea  that  their  behavior  was  either  fantastic  or 
arrogant  through  their  religion.  It  was  simply  a  per- 
vading influence;  and  I  am  sure  that  in  the  father 
and  mother  it  dignified  life,  and  freighted  motive  and 
action  here  with  the  significance  of  eternal  fate.  When 
the  children  were  taught  that  in  every  thought  and  in 
every  deed  they  were  choosing  their  portion  with  the 
devils  or  the  angels,  and  that  God  himself  could  not 
^^save  them  against  themselves,  it  often  went  in  and  out 
or  their  minds,  as  such  things  must  with  children  ;  but 
some  impression  remained  and  helped  them  to  realize 
the  serious  responsibility  they  were  under  to  their  own 
after-selves.  At  the  same  time,  the  father,  who  loved 
a  joke  almost  as  much  as  he  loved  a  truth,  and  who 
despised  austerity  as  something  owlish,  set  them  the 
example  of  getting  all  the  harmless  fun  they  could  out 
of  experience.  They  had  their  laugh  about  nearly  every- 
thing that  was  not  essentially  sacred ;  they  were  made 
to  feel  the  ludicrous  as  an  alleviation  of  existence ;  and 
the  father  and  mother  were  with  them  on  the  same  level 
in  all  this  enjoyment. 

The  house  was  pretty  full  of  children,  big  and  little. 
There  were  seven  of  them  in  the  Boy's  Town,  and  eight 
afterwards  in  all ;  so  that  if  there  had  been  no  Boy's 
Town  about  them,  they  would  still  have  had  a  Boy's 
World  indoors.  They  lived  in  three  different  houses — 
the  Thomas  house,  the  Smith  house,  and  the  Falconer 
house — severally  called  after  the  names  of  their  owners, 
for  they  never  had  a  house  of  their  own.  Of  the  first 
my  boy  remembered  nothing,  except  the  woodpile  on 
which  he  tried  his  axe,  and  a  closet  near  the  front  door, 
which  he  entered  into  one  day,  with  his  mother's  leave, 


HOME   AND   KINDEED.  15 

to  pray,  as  the  Scripture  bade.  It  was  very  dark,  and 
hung  full  of  clothes,  and  his  literal  application  of  the 
text  was  not  edifying ;  he  fancied,  with  a  child's  vague 
suspicion,  that  it  amused  his  father  and  mother ;  I  dare 
say  it  also  touched  them.  Of  the  Smith  house,  he 
could  remember  much  more  :  the  little  upper  room 
where  the  boys  slept,  and  the  narrow  stairs  which  he 
often  rolled  down  in  the  morning ;  the  front  room  where 
he  lay  sick  with  a  fever,  and  was  bled  by  the  doctor 
as  people  used  to  be  in  those  days ;  the  woodshed  where, 
one  dreadful  afternoon,  when  he  had  somehow  been  left 
alone  in  the  house,  he  took  it  into  his  head  that  the 
family  dog  Tip  was  going  mad ;  the  window  where  he 
traced  the  figure  of  a  bull  on  greased  paper  from  an  en- 
graving held  up  against  the  light :  none  of  them  impor- 
tant facts,  but  such  as  stick  in  the  mind  by  the  capricious 
action  of  memory,  while  far  greater  events  drop  out  of  it. 
My  boy's  elder  brother  at  once  accused  him  of  tracing 
that  bull,  which  he  pretended  to  have  copied ;  but  their 
father  insisted  upon  taking  the  child's  word  for  it, 
though  he  must  have  known  he  was  lying ;  and  this 
gave  my  boy  a  far  worse  conscience  than  if  his  father 
had  whipped  him.  The  father's  theory  was  that  people 
are  more  apt  to  be  true  if  you  trust  them  than  if  you 
doubt  them ;  I  do  not  think  he  always  found  it  work 
perfectly ;  but  I  believe  he  was  right. 

My  boy  was  for  a  long  time  very  miserable  about  that 
bull,  and  the  experience  taught  him  to  desire  the  truth 
and  honor  it,  even  when  he  could  not  attain  it.  Five 
or  six  years  after,  when  his  brother  and  he  had  begun 
to  read  stories,  they  found  one  in  the  old  New  York 
Mirror  which  had  a  great  influence  upon  their  daily 
conduct.     It  was  called  "  The  Trippings  of  Tom  Pe(p- 


# 


16  A  boy's  town. 

per ;  or,  the  Effects  of  Romancing,"  and  it  showed  how 
at  many  important  moments  the  hero  had  been  baulked 
of  fortune  by  his  habit  of  fibbing.  They  took  counsel 
together,  and  pledged  themselves  not  to  tell  the  smallest 
lie,  upon  any  occasion  whatever.  It  was  a  frightful 
slavery,  for  there  are  a  great  many  times  in  a  boy's 
life  when  it  seems  as  if  the  truth  really  could  not  serve 
him.  Their  great  trial  was  having  to  take  a  younger 
brother  with  them  whenever  they  wanted  to  go  off  with 
other  boys ;  and  it  had  been  their  habit  to  get  away 
from  him  by  many  little  deceits  which  they  could  not 
practise  now:  to  tell  him  that  their  mother  wanted 
him;  or  to  send  him  home  upon  some  errand  to  his 
pretended  advantage  that  had  really  no  object  but  his 
absence.  I  suppose  there  is  now  no  boy  living  who 
would  do  this.  My  boy  and  his  brother  groaned  under 
their  good  resolution,  I  do  not  know  how  long ;  but  the 
day  came  when  they  could  bear  it  no  longer,  though  I 
cannot  give  just  the  time  or  the  terms  of  their  back- 
sliding. That  elder  brother  had  been  hard  enough  on 
my  boy  before  the  period  of  this  awful  reform  :  his 
uprightness,  his  unselfishness,  his  truthfulness  were  a 
daily  reproach  to  him,  and  it  did  not  need  this  season 
of  absolute  sincerity  to  complete  his  wretchedness.  Yet 
it  was  an  experience  which  afterwards  he  would  not  will- 
ingly have  missed :  for  once  in  his  little  confused  life 
he  had  tried  to  practise  a  virtue  because  the  opposite 
vice  had  been  made  to  appear  foolish  and  mischievous 
to  him ;  and  not  from  any  superstitious  fear  or  hope. 

As  far  as  I  can  make  out,  he  had  far  more  fears  than 
hopes ;  and  perhaps  every  boy  has.  It  was  in  the 
Smith  house  that  he  began  to  be  afraid  of  ghosts, 
though  he  never  saw  one,  or  anything  like  one.     He 


HOME   AND   KINDEED.  17 

never  saw  even  the  good  genius  who  came  down  the 
chimney  and  filled  the  children's  stockings  at  Christ- 
mas. He  wished  to  see  him ;  »but  he  understood  that 
St.  Nicholas  was  a  shy  spirit,  and  was  apt  to  pass  by 
the  stockings  of  boys  who  lay  in  wait  for  him.  His 
mother  had  told  him  how  the  Peltsnickel  used  to  come 
with  a  bundle  of  rods  for  the  bad  children  when  the 
Chriskingle  brought  the  presents  of  the  good  ones, 
among  his  grandmother's  Pennsylvania  German  kin- 
dred ;  and  he  had  got  them  all  somehow  mixed  up  to- 
gether. Then  St.  Nicholas,  though  he  was  so  pleasant 
and  friendly  in  the  poem  about  the  night  before  Christ- 
mas, was  known  to  some  of  the  neighbor  boys  as  Santa 
Claus ;  they  called  it  Centre  Claws,  and  my  boy  im- 
agined him  with  large  talons  radiating  from  the  pit  of 
his  stomach.  But  this  was  all  nothing  to  the  notion 
of  Dowd's  spectacles,  which  his  father  sometimes  joked 
him  about,  and  which  were  represented  by  a  pair  of 
hollow,  glassless  iron  rims  which  he  had  found  in  the 
street.  They  may  or  may  not  have  belonged  to  Dowd,  and 
Dowd  may  have  been  an  Irishman  in  the  neighborhood, 
or  he  may  not ;  he  may  have  died,  or  he  may  not ;  but 
there  was  something  in  the  mere  gruesome  mention  of 
his  spectacles  which  related  itself  to  all  the  boy  had 
conceived  of  the  ghostly  and  ghastly,  and  all  that  was 
alarming  in  the  supernatural ;  he  could  never  say  in  the 
least  how  or  why.  I  fancy  no  child  can  ever  explain 
just  why  it  is  affected  in  this  way  or  that  way  by  the 
things  that  are  or  are  not  in  the  world  about  it ;  it  is 
not  easy  to  do  this  for  one's  self  in  after-life.  At  any 
rate,  it  is  certain  that  my  boy  dwelt  most  of  his  time 
amid  shadows  that  were,  perhaps,  projected  over  his 
narrow  outlook  from  some  former  state  of  being,  or  from 


18  A   BOY'S   TOWN. 

the  gloomy  minds  of  long-dead  ancestors.  His  home 
was  cheerful  and  most  happy,  but  he  peopled  all  its 
nooks  and  corners  with  shapes  of  doom  and  horror. 
The  other  boys  were  not  slow  to  find  this  out,  and 
their  invention  supplied  with  ready  suggestion  of  offi- 
cers and  prisons  any  little  lack  of  misery  his  spectres 
and  goblins  left.  He  often  narrowly  escaped  arrest,  or 
thought  so,  when  they  built  a  fire  in  the  street  at  night, 
and  suddenly  kicked  it  to  pieces,  and  shouted,  "  Run, 
run  !  The  constable  will  catch  you !"  Nothing  but 
flight  saved  my  boy,  in  these  cases,  when  he  was  small. 
He  grew  bolder,  after  a  while,  concerning  constables, 
but  never  concerning  ghosts ;  they  shivered  in  the  au- 
tumnal evenings  among  the  tall  stalks  of  the  corn-field 
that  stretched,  a  vast  wilderness,  behind  the  house  to 
the  next  street,  and  they  walked  the  night  everywhere. 

Yet  nothing  more  tragical,  that  he  could  remember, 
really  happened  while  he  lived  in  the  Smith  house  than 
something  he  saw  one  bright  sunny  morning,  while  all 
the  boys  were  hanging  on  the  fence  of  the  next  house, 
and  watching  the  martins  flying  down  to  the  ground 
from  their  box  in  the  gable.  The  birds  sent  out  sharp 
cries  of  terror  or  anger,  and  presently  he  saw  a  black 
cat  crouching  in  the  grass,  with  half -shut  eyes  and  an 
air  of  dreamy  indifference.  The  birds  swept  down  in 
longer  and  lower  loops  towards  the  cat,  drawn  by  some 
fatal  charm,  or  by  fear  of  the  danger  that  threatened  their 
colony  from  the  mere  presence  of  the  cat ;  but  she  did 
not  stir.  Suddenly  she  sprang  into  the  air,  and  then 
darted  away  with  a  martin  in  her  mouth,  while  my  boy's 
heart  leaped  into  his  own,  and  the  other  boys  rushed 
after  the  cat. 

As  when  something  dreadful  happens,  this  s&emed 


:  'RTJN,  RUN  !  THE  CONSTABLE  WILL  CATCH  YOL 


HOME  A2JD  KINDRED.  19 

not  to  have  happened ;  but  a  lovely  experience  leaves  a 
sense  of  enduring  fact  behind,  and  remains  a  rich  pos- 
session no  matter  how  slight  and  simple  it  was.  My 
boy's  mother  has  been  dead  almost  a  quarter  of  a  cent- 
ury, but  as  one  of  the  elder  children  he  knew  her 
when  she  was  young  and  gay ;  and  his  last  distinct 
association  with  the  Smith  house  is  of  coming  home 
with  her  after  a  visit  to  her  mother's  far  up  the  Ohio 
River.  In  their  absence  the  June  grass,  which  the 
children's  feet  always  kept  trampled  down  so  low,  had 
flourished  up  in  purple  blossom,  and  now  stood  rank 
and  tall ;  and  the  mother  threw  herself  on  her  knees  in 
it,  and  tossed  and  frolicked  with  her  little  ones  like  a 
girl.  The  picture  remains,  and  the  wonder  of  the  world 
in  which  it  was  true  once,  while  all  the  phantasmagory 
of  spectres  has  long  vanished  away. 

The  boy  could  not  recall  the  family's  removal  to  the 
Falconer  house.  They  were  not  there,  and  then  they 
were  there.  It  was  a  brick  house,  at  a  corner  of  the 
principal  street,  and  in  the  gable  there  were  places  for 
mock-windows  where  there  had  never  been  blinds  put, 
but  where  the  swallows  had  thickly  built  their  nests. 
I  dare  say  my  boy  might  have  been  willing  to  stone 
these  nests,  but  he  was  not  allowed,  either  he  or  his 
mates,  who  must  have  panted  with  him  to  improve  such 
an  opportunity  of  havoc.  There  was  a  real  window  in 
the  gable  from  which  he  could  look  out  of  the  gar- 
ret ;  such  a  garret  as  every  boy  should  once  have  the 
use  of  some  time  in  his  life.  It  was  dim  and  low, 
though  it  seemed  high,  and  the  naked  brown  rafters 
were  studded  with  wasps'  nests ;  and  the  rain  beat  on 
the  shingles  overhead.  The  house  had  been  occupied 
by  a  physician,  and  under  the  eaves  the  children  f  ound. 


20  A   BOY'S    TOWN. 

heaps  of  phials  full  of  doctor's  stuff ;  the  garret  abound- 
ed in  their  own  family  boxes  and  barrels,  but  there  was 
always  room  for  a  swing,  which  the  boys  used  in  train- 
ing for  their  circuses.  Below  the  garret  there  were  two 
unimportant  stories  with  chambers,  dining-room,  parlor, 
and  so  on ;  then  you  came  to  the  brick-paved  kitch- 
en in  the  basement,  and  a  perfectly  glorious  cellar,  with 
rats  in  it.  Outside  there  Avas  a  large  yard,  with  five  or 
six  huge  old  cherry-trees,  and  a  garden  plot,  where 
every  spring  my  boy  tried  to  make  a  garden,  with 
never-failing  failure. 

The  house  gave  even  to  him  a  sense  of  space  un- 
known before,  and  he  could  recall  his  mother's  satis- 
faction in  it.  He  has  often  been  back  there  in  dreams, 
and  found  it  on  the  old  scale  of  grandeur;  but  no 
doubt  it  was  a  very  simple  affair.  The  fortunes  of  a 
Whig  editor  in  a  place  so  overwhelmingly  democratic 
as  the  Boy's  Town  were  not  such  as  could  have  war- 
ranted his  living  in  a  palace ;  and  he  must  have  been 
poor,  as  the  world  goes  now.  But  the  family  always 
lived  in  abundance,  and  in  their  way  they  belonged  to 
the  employing  class ;  that  is,  the  father  had  men  to 
work  for  him.  On  the  other  hand,  he  worked  with 
them ;  and  the  boys,  as  they  grew  old  enough,  were 
taught  to  work  with  them,  too.  My  boy  grew  old 
enough  very  young ;  and  was  put  to  use  in  the  printing- 
office  before  he  was  ten  years  of  age.  This  was  not 
altogether  because  he  was  needed  there,  I  dare  say, 
but  because  it  was  part  of  his  father's  Swedenborgian 
philosophy  that  every  one  should  fulfil  a  use ;  I  do  not 
know  that  when  the  boy  wanted  to  go  swimming,  or 
hunting,  or  skating,  it  consoled  him  much  to  reflect 
that  the  angels  in  the  highest  heaven  delighted  in  uses ; 


HOME   AND   KINDRED.  21 

nevertheless,  it  was  good  for  him  to  be  of  use,  though 
maybe  not  so  much  use. 

If  his  mother  did  her  own  work,  with  help  only  now 
and  then  from  a  hired  girl,  that  was  the  custom  of  the 
time  and  country  ;  and  her  memory  was  always  the 
more  reverend  to  him,  because  whenever  he  looked 
back  at  her  in  those  dim  years,  he  saw  her  about  some 
of  those  household  offices  which  are  so  beautiful  to  a 
child.  She  was  always  the  best  and  tenderest  mother, 
and  her  love  had  the  heavenly  art  of  making  each  child 
feel  itself  the  most  important,  while  she  was  partial  to 
none.  In  spite  of  her  busy  days  she  followed  their 
father  in  his  religion  and  literature,  and  at  night,  when 
her  long  toil  was  over,  she  sat  with  the  children  and 
listened  while  he  read  aloud.  The  first  book  my  boy 
remembered  to  have  heard  him  read  was  Moore's  "  Lalla 
Rookh,"  of  which  he  formed  but  a  vague  notion,  though 
while  he  struggled  after  its  meaning  he  took  all  its 
music  in,  and  began  at  once  to  make  rhymes  of  his 
own.  He  had  no  conception  of  literature  except  the 
pleasure  there  was  in  making  it ;  and  he  had  no  out- 
look into  the  world  of  it,  which  must  have  been  pretty 
open  to  his  father.  The  father  read  aloud  some  of 
Dickens's  Christmas  stories,  then  new ;  and  the  boy  had 
a  good  deal  of  trouble  with  the  "  Haunted  Man."  One 
rarest  night  of  all,  the  family  sat  up  till  two  o'clock, 
listening  to  a  novel  that  my  boy  long  ago  forgot  the 
name  of,  if  he  ever  knew  its  name.  It  was  all  about 
a  will,  forged  or  lost,  and  there  was  a  great  scene  in 
court,  and  after  that  the  mother  declared  that  she  could 
not  go  to  bed  till  she  heard  the  end.  His  own  first 
reading  was  in  history.  At  nine  years  of  age  he  read 
the  history  of  Greece,  and  the  history  of  Rome,  and  he 


22  A  BOY'S  TOWN. 

knew  that  Goldsmith  wrote  them.  One  night  his  fa- 
ther told  the  boys  all  about  Don  Quixote ;  and  a  little 
while  after  he  gave  my  boy  the  book.  He  read  it  over 
and  over  again ;  but  he  did  not  suppose  it  was  a  novel. 
It  was  his  elder  brother  who  read  novels,  and  a  novel 
was  like  "  Handy  Andy,"  or  "  Harry  Lorrequer,"  or  the 
"  Bride  of  Lammermoor."  His  brother  had  another  novel 
which  they  preferred  to  either ;  it  was  in  Harper's  old 
"  Library  of  Select  Novels,"  and  was  called  "  Alamance  ; 
or,  the  Great  and  Final  Experiment,"  and  it  was  about 
the  life  of  some  sort  of  community  in  North  Carolina. 
It  bewitched  them,  and  though  my  boy  could  not  after- 
wards recall  a  single  fact  or  figure  in  it,  he  could  bring 
before  his  mind's  eye  every  trait  of  its  outward  aspect. 
It  was  at  this  time  that  his  father  bought  an  English- 
Spanish  grammar  from  a  returned  volunteer,  who  had 
picked  it  up  in  the  city  of  Mexico,  and  gave  it  to  the 
boy.  He  must  have  expected  him  to  learn  Spanish 
from  it ;  but  the  boy  did  not  know  even  the  parts  of 
speech  in  English.  As  the  father  had  once  taught 
English  grammar  in  six  lessons,  from  a  broadside  of  his 
own  authorship,  he  may  have  expected  the  principle  of 
heredity  to  help  the  boy ;  and  certainly  he  did  dig  the 
English  grammar  out  of  that  blessed  book,  and  the 
Spanish  language  with  it,  but  after  many  long  years, 
and  much  despair  over  the  difference  between  a  prep- 
osition and  a  substantive. 

All  this  went  along  with  great  and  continued  political 
excitement,  and  with  some  glimpses  of  the  social  prob- 
lem. It  was  very  simple  then  ;  nobody  was  very  rich, 
and  nobody  was  in  want;  but  somehow,  as  the  boy 
grew  older,  he  began  to  discover  that  there  were  differ- 
ences, even  in  the  little  world  about  him ;  some  were 


HOME   AND   KINDKED.  23 

higher  and  some  were  lower.  From  the  first  he  was 
taught  by  precept  and  example  to  take  the  side  of  the 
lower.  As  the  children  were  denied  oftener  than  they 
were  indulged,  the  margin  of  their  own  abundance  must 
have  been  narrower  than  they  ever  knew  then ;  but  if 
they  had  been  of  the  most  prosperous,  their  bent  in 
this  matter  would  have  been  the  same.  Once  there  was 
a  church  festival,  or  something  of  that  sort,  and  there 
was  a  good  deal  of  the  provision  left  over,  which  it  was 
decided  should  be  given  to  the  poor.  This  was  very 
easy,  but  it  was  not  so  easy  to  find  the  poor  whom 
it  should  be  given  to.  At  last  a  hard-working  widow 
was  chosen  to  receive  it ;  the  ladies  carried  it  to  her 
front  door  and  gave  it  her,  and  she  carried  it  to  her 
back  door  and  threw  it  into  the  alley.  No  doubt  she 
had  enough  without  it,  but  there  were  circumstances  of 
indignity  or  patronage  attending  the  gift  which  were 
recognized  in  my  boy's  home,  and  which  helped  after- 
wards to  make  him  doubtful  of  all  giving,  except  the 
humblest,  and  restive  with  a  world  in  which  there  need 
be  any  giving  at  all. 


III. 

THE   RIVER. 

It  seems  to  me  that  the  best  way  to  get  at  the  heart 
of  any  boy's  town  is  to  take  its  different  watercourses 
and  follow  them  into  it. 

The  house  where  my  boy  first  lived  was  not  far  from 
the  river,  and  he  must  have  seen  it  often  before  he  no- 
ticed it.  But  he  was  not  aware  of  it  till  he  found  it  un- 
der the  bridge.  Without  the  river  there  could  not  have 
been  a  bridge ;  the  fact  of  the  bridge  may  have  made 
him  look  for  the  river ;  but  the  bridge  is  foremost  in 
his  mind.  It  is  a  long  wooden  tunnel,  with  two  road- 
ways, and  a  foot-path  on  either  side  of  these ;  there  is 
a  toll-house  at  each  end,  and  from  one  to  the  other  it  is 
about  as  far  as  from  the  Earth  to  the  planet  Mars.  On 
the  western  shore  of  the  river  is  a  smaller  town  than  the 
Boy's  Town,  and  in  the  perspective  the  entrance  of  the 
bridge  on  that  side  is  like  a  dim  little  doorway.  The 
timbers  are  of  a  hugeness  to  strike  fear  into  the  heart  of 
the  boldest  little  boy  ;  and  there  is  something  awful  even 
about  the  dust  in  the  roadways  ;  soft  and  thrillingly  cool 
to  the  boy's  bare  feet,  it  lies  thick  in  a  perpetual  twi- 
light, streaked  at  intervals  by  the  sun  that  slants  in  at 
the  high,  narrow  windows  under  the  roof ;  it  has  a  cer- 
tain potent,  musty  smell.  The  bridge  has  three  piers, 
and  at  low  water  hardier  adventurers  than  he  wade 
out  to  the  middle  pier ;  some  heroes  even  fish  there, 


THE   KIVEK.  25 

standing  all  day  on  the  loose  rocks  about  the  base  of 
the  pier.  He  shudders  to  see  them,  and  aches  with  won- 
der how  they  will  get  ashore.  Once  he  is  there  when  a 
big  boy  wades  back  from  the  middle  pier,  where  he  has 
been  to  rob  a  goose's  nest ;  he  has  some  loose  silver 
change  in  his  wet  hand,  and  my  boy  understands  that 
it  has  come  out  of  one  of  the  goose  eggs.  This  fact, 
which  he  never  thought  of  questioning,  gets  mixed  up 
in  his  mind  with  an  idea  of  riches,  of  treasure-trove,  in 
the  cellar  of  an  old  house  that  has  been  torn  down  near 
the  end  of  the  bridge. 

On  the  bridge  he  first  saw  the  crazy  man  who  belongs 
in  every  boy's  town.  In  this  one  he  was  a  hapless, 
harmless  creature,  whom  the  boys  knew  as  Solomon 
Whistler,  perhaps  because  his  name  was  Whistler,  per- 
haps because  he  whistled ;  though  when  my  boy  met 
him  midway  of  the  bridge,  he  marched  swiftly  and 
silently  by,  with  his  head  high  and  looking  neither  to 
the  right  nor  to  the  left,  with  an  insensibility  to  the 
boy's  presence  that  froze  his  blood  and  shrivelled  him 
up  with  terror.  As  his  fancy  early  became  the  sport 
of  playfellows  not  endowed  with  one  so  vivid,  he  was 
taught  to  expect  that  Solomon  Whistler  would  get  him 
some  day,  though  what  he  would  do  with  him  when  he 
had  got  him  his  anguish  must  have  been  too  great  even 
to  let  him  guess.  Some  of  the  boys  said  Solomon  had 
gone  crazy  from  fear  of  being  drafted  in  the  war  of 
1812  ;  others  that  he  had  been  crossed  in  love  ;  but  my 
boy  did  not  quite  know  then  what  either  meant.  He 
only  knew  that  Solomon  Whistler  lived  at  the  poor- 
house  beyond  the  eastern  border  of  the  town,  and  that 
he  ranged  between  this  sojourn  and  the  illimitable 
wilderness  north  of  the  town  on  the  western  shore 

3 


26  A   BOY'S   TOWN. 

of  the  river.  The  crazy  man  was  often  in  the  hoy's 
dreams,  the  memories  of  which  blend  so  with  the 
memories  of  real  occurrences :  he  could  not  tell  later 
whether  he  once  crossed  the  bridge  when  the  footway 
had  been  partly  taken  up,  and  he  had  to  walk  on  the 
girders,  or  whether  he  only  dreamed  of  that  awful  pas- 
sage. It  was  quite  fearful  enough  to  cross  when  the  foot- 
way was  all  down,  and  he  could  see  the  blue  gleam  of 
the  river  far  underneath  through  the  cracks  between  the 
boards.  It  made  his  brain  reel ;  and  he  felt  that  he  took 
his  life  in  his  hand  whenever  he  entered  the  bridge,  even 
when  he  had  grown  old  enough  to  be  making  an  excur- 
sion with  some  of  his  playmates  to  the  farm  of  an  uncle 
of  theirs  who  lived  two  miles  up  the  river.  The  farmer 
gave  them  all  the  watermelons  they  wanted  to  eat,  and  on 
the  way  home,  when  they  lay  resting  under  the  sycamores 
on  the  river-bank,  Solomon  Whistler  passed  by  in  the 
middle  of  the  road,  silent,  swift,  straight  onward.  I  do 
not  know  why  the  sight  of  this  afflicted  soul  did  not 
slay  my  boy  on  the  spot,  he  was  so  afraid  of  him ;  but 
the  crazy  man  never  really  hurt  any  one,  though  the 
boys  followed  and  mocked  him  as  soon  as  he  got  by. 
The  boys  knew  little  or  nothing  of  the  river  south  of 
the  bridge,  and  frequented  mainly  that  mile-long  stretch 
of  it  between  the  bridge  and  the  dam,  beyond  which 
there  was  practically  nothing  for  many  years ;  after- 
wards they  came  to  know  that  this  strange  region  was 
inhabited.  Just  above  the  bridge  the  Hydraulic  emptied 
into  the  river  with  a  heart-shaking  plunge  over  an  im- 
mense mill-wheel ;  and  there  was  a  cluster  of  mills  at  this 
point,  which  were  useful  in  accumulating  the  waters  into 
fishing-holes  before  they  rushed  through  the  gates  upon 
the  wheel.     The  boys  used  to  play  inside  the  big  mill- 


THE   KIVEE.  27 

wheel  before  the  water  was  let  into  the  Hydraulic,  and 
my  boy  caught  his  first  fish  in  the  pool  below  the  wheel. 
The  mills  had  some  secondary  use  in  making  flour  and 
the  like,  but  this  could  not  concern  a  small  boy.  They 
were  as  simply  a  part  of  his  natural  circumstance  as  the 
large  cottonwood-tree  which  hung  over  the  river  from 
a  point  near  by,  and  which  seemed  to  have  always  an 
oriole  singing  in  it.  All  along  there  the  banks  were 
rather  steep,  and  to  him  they  looked  very  high.  The 
blue  clay  that  formed  them  was  full  of  springs,  which 
the  boys  dammed  up  in  little  ponds  and  let  loose  in 
glassy  falls  upon  their  flutter-mills.  As  with  everything 
that  boys  do,  these  mills  were  mostly  failures  ;  the  pins 
which  supported  the  wheels  were  always  giving  way ; 
and  though  there  were  instances  of  boys  who  started 
their  wheels  at  recess  and  found  them  still  fluttering 
away  at  noon  when  they  came  out  of  school,  none  ever 
carried  his  enterprise  so  far  as  to  spin  the  cotton  blow- 
ing from  the  balls  of  the  cottonwood-tree  by  the  shore, 
as  they  all  meant  to  do.  They  met  such  disappoint- 
ments with  dauntless  cheerfulness,  and  lightly  turned 
from  some  bursting  bubble  to  some  other  where  the  glory 
of  the  universe  was  still  mirrored.  The  river  shore  was 
strewn  not  only  with  waste  cotton,  but  with  drift  which 
the  water  had  made  porous,  and  which  they  called  smoke- 
wood.  They  made  cigars  for  their  own  use  out  of  it,  and 
it  seemed  to  them  that  it  might  be  generally  introduced 
as  a  cheap  and  simple  substitute  for  tobacco  ;  but  they 
never  got  any  of  it  into  the  market,  not  even  the  mar- 
ket of  that  world  where  the  currency  was  pins. 

The  river  had  its  own  climate,  and  this  climate  was  of 
course  much  such  a  climate  as  the  boys,  for  whom  nat- 
ure intended  the  river,  would  have  chosen.     I  do  not 


28  A   BOY  S    TOWN. 

believe  it  was  ever  winter  there,  though  it  was  some- 
times late  autumn,  so  that  the  boys  could  have  some 
use  for  the  caves  they  dug  at  the  top  of  the  bank,  with 
a  hole  coming  through  the  turf,  to  let  out  the  smoke  of 
the  fires  they  built  inside.  They  had  the  joy  of  chok- 
ing and  blackening  over  these  flues,  and  they  intended 
to  live  on  corn  and  potatoes  borrowed  from  the  house- 
hold stores  of  the  boy  whose  house  was  nearest.  They 
never  got  so  far  as  to  parch  the  corn  or  to  bake  the  po- 
tatoes in  their  caves,  but  there  was  the  fire,  and  the 
draft  was  magnificent.  The  light  of  the  red  flames 
painted  the  little,  happy,  foolish  faces,  so  long  since 
wrinkled  and  grizzled  with  age,  or  mouldered  away  to 
dust,  as  the  boys  huddled  before  them  under  the  bank, 
and  fed  them  with  the  drift,  or  stood  patient  of  the  heat 
and  cold  in  the  afternoon  light  of  some  vast  Saturday 
waning  to  nightfall. 

The  river-climate,  with  these  autumnal  intervals,  was 
made  up  of  a  quick,  eventful  springtime,  followed  by 
the  calm  of  a  cloudless  summer  that  seemed  never  to 
end.  But  the  spring,  short  as  it  was,  had  its  great  at- 
tractions, and  chief  of  these  was  the  freshet  which  it 
brought  to  the  river.  They  would  hear  somehow  that 
the  river  was  rising,  and  then  the  boys,  who  had  never 
connected  its  rise  with  the  rains  they  must  have  been 
having,  would  all  go  down  to  its  banks  and  watch  the 
swelling  waters.  These  would  be  yellow  and  thick, 
and  the  boiling  current  would  have  smooth,  oily  ed- 
dies, where  pieces  of  drift  would  whirl  round  and  round, 
and  then  escape  and  slip  down  the  stream.  There  were 
saw-logs  and  whole  trees  with  their  branching  tops, 
lengths  of  fence  and  hen-coops  and  pig-pens  ;  once  there 
was  a  stable ;  and  if  the  flood  continued,  there  began  to 


THE   KIVER.  29 

come  swollen  bodies  of  horses  and  cattle.  This  must 
have  meant  serious  loss  to  the  people  living  on  the  river* 
bottoms  above,  but  the  boys  counted  it  all  gain.  They 
cheered  the  objects  as  they  floated  by,  and  they  were 
breathless  with  the  excitement  of  seeing  the  men  who 
caught  fence-rails  and  cord-wood,  and  even  saw-logs, 
with  iron  prongs  at  the  points  of  long  poles,  as  they 
stood  on  some  jutting  point  of  shore  and  stretched  far 
out  over  the  flood.  The  boys  exulted  in  the  turbid 
spread  of  the  stream,  which  filled  its  low  western  banks 
and  stole  over  their  tops,  and  washed  into  all  the  hollow 
places  along  its  shores,  and  shone  among  the  trunks  of 
the  sycamores  on  Delorac's  Island,  which  was  almost  of 
the  geographical  importance  of  The  Island  in  Old  River. 
When  the  water  began  to  go  down  their  hearts  sank 
with  it ;  and  they  gave  up  the  hope  of  seeing  the  bridge 
carried  away.  Once  the  river  rose  to  within  a  few  feet 
of  it,  so  that  if  the  right  piece  of  drift  had  been  there 
to  do  its  duty,  the  bridge  might  have  been  torn  from 
its  piers  and  swept  down  the  raging  tide  into  those  un- 
known gulfs  to  the  southward.  Many  a  time  they 
went  to  bed  full  of  hope  that  it  would  at  least  happen 
in  the  night,  and  woke  to  learn  with  shame  and  grief 
in  the  morning  that  the  bridge  was  still  there,  and  the 
river  was  falling.  It  was  a  little  comfort  to  know  that 
some  of  the  big  boys  had  almost  seen  it  go,  watching 
as  far  into  the  night  as  nine  o'clock  with  the  men  who 
sat  up  near  the  bridge  till  daylight :  men  of  leisure  and 
public  spirit,  but  not  perhaps  the  leading  citizens. 

There  must  have  been  a  tedious  time  between  the 
going  down  of  the  flood  and  the  first  days  when  the 
water  was  warm  enough  for  swimming ;  but  it  left  no 
trace.     The  boys  are  standing  on  the  shore  while  the 


30  A   BOY'S   TOWN. 

freshet  rushes  by,  and  then  they  are  in  the  water,  splash- 
ing, diving,  ducking;  it  is  like  that;  so  that  I  do  not 
know  just  how  to  get  in  that  period  of  fishing  which 
must  always  ha^e  come  between.  There  were  not  many 
fish  in  that  part  of  the  Miami ;  my  boy's  experience  was 
full  of  the  ignominy  of  catching  shiners  and  suckers, 
or,  at  the  best,  mudcats,  as  they  called  the  yellow  catfish; 
but  there  were  boys,  of  those  who  cursed  and  swore, 
who  caught  sunfish,  as  they  called  the  bream  ;  and  there 
were  men  who  were  reputed  to  catch  at  will,  as  it  were, 
silvercats  and  river-bass.  They  fished  with  minnows, 
which  they  kept  in  battered  tin  buckets  that  they  did 
not  allow  you  even  to  touch,  or  hardly  to  look  at ;  my 
boy  scarcely  breathed  in  their  presence ;  when  one  of 
them  got  up  to  cast  his  line  in  a  new  place,  the  boys 
all  ran,  and  then  came  slowly  back.  These  men  often 
carried  a  flask  of  liquid  that  had  the  property,  when 
taken  inwardly,  of  keeping  the  damp  out.  The  boys 
respected  them  for  their  ability  to  drink  whiskey,  and 
thought  it  a  fit  and  honorable  thing  that  they  should 
now  and  then  fall  into  the  river  over  the  brinks  where 
they  had  set  their  poles. 

But  they  disappear  like  persons  in  a  dream,  and  their 
fishing-time  vanishes  with  them,  and  the  swimming-time 
is  in  full  possession  of  the  river,  and  of  all  the  other 
waters  of  the  Boy's  Town.  The  river,  the  Canal  Basin, 
the  Hydraulic  and  its  Reservoirs,  seemed  all  full  of  boys 
at  the  same  moment ;  but  perhaps  it  was  not  the  same, 
for  my  boy  was  always  in  each  place,  and  so  he  must 
have  been  there  at  different  times.  Each  place  had  its 
delights  and  advantages,  but  the  swimming-holes  in  the 
river  were  the  greatest  favorites.  He  could  not  remem- 
ber when  he  began  to  go  into  them,  though  it  certainly 


THE   KIVEK.  31 

was  before  lie  could  swim.  There  was  a  time  when  he 
was  afraid  of  getting  in  over  his  head ;  but  he  did  not 
know  just  when  he  learned  to  swim,  any  more  than  he 
knew  when  he  learned  to  read  ;  he  could  not  swim,  and 
then  he  could  swim ;  he  could  not  read,  and  then  he  could 
read  ;  but  I  dare  say  the  reading  came  somewhat  before 
the  swimming.  Yet  the  swimming  must  have  come  very 
early,  and  certainly  it  was  kept  up  with  continual  prac- 
tice ;  he  swam  quite  as  much  as  he  read  ;  perhaps  more. 
The  boys  had  deep  swimming-holes  and  shallow  ones ; 
and  over  the  deep  ones  there  was  always  a  spring-board, 
from  which  they  threw  somersaults,  or  dived  straight 
down  into  the  depths,  where  there  were  warm  and  cold 
currents  mysteriously  interwoven.  They  believed  that 
these  deep  holes  were  infested  by  water-snakes,  though 
they  never  saw  any,  and  they  expected  to  be  bitten  by 
snapping-turtles,  though  this  never  happened.  Fiery 
dragons  could  not  have  kept  them  out ;  gallynippers, 
whatever  they  were,  certainly  did  not;  they  were  be- 
lieved to  abound  at  the  bottom  of  the  deep  holes ;  but  the 
boys  never  stayed  long  in  the  deep  holes,  and  they  pre- 
ferred the  shallow  places,  where  the  river  broke  into  a 
long  ripple  (they  called  it  riffle)  on  its  gravelly  bed,  and 
where  they  could  at  once  soak  and  bask  in  the  musi- 
cal rush  of  the  sunlit  waters.  I  have  heard  people  in 
New  England  blame  all  the  Western  rivers  for  being 
yellow  and  turbid ;  but  I  know  that  after  the  spring 
floods,  when  the  Miami  had  settled  down  to  its  sum- 
mer business  with  the  boys,  it  was  as  clear  and  as  blue 
as  if  it  were  spilled  out  of  the  summer  sky.  The  boys 
liked  the  riffle  because  they  could  stay  in  so  long  there, 
and  there  were  little  landlocked  pools  and  shallows, 
where  the  water  was  even  warmer,  and  they  could  stay 


32  A  boy's  town. 

in  longer.  At  most  places  under  the  banks  there  was 
{clay  of  different  colors,  which  they  used  for  war-paint 
I  in  their  Indian  fights ;  and  after  they  had  their  Indian 
/  fights  they  could  rush  screaming  and  clattering  into  the 
,  riffle.  When  the  stream  had  washed  them  clean  down  to 
their  red  sunburn  or  their  leathern  tan,  they  could  paint 
;  up  again  and  have  more  Indian  fights. 

I  do  not  know  why  my  boy's  associations  with  Delo- 
rac's  Island  were  especially  wild  in  their  character,  for 
nothing  more  like  outlawry  than  the  game  of  mumble- 
the-peg  ever  occurred  there.  Perhaps  it  was  because 
the  boys  had  to  get  to  it  by  water  that  it  seemed  be- 
yond the  bounds  of  civilization.  They  might  have 
reached  it  by  the  bridge,  but  the  temper  of  the  boys  on 
the  western  shore  was  uncertain ;  they  would  have  had 
to  run  the  gauntlet  of  their  river-guard  on  the  way  up 
to  it ;  and  they  might  have  been  friendly  or  they  might 
not;  it  would  have  depended  a  good  deal  on  the  size 
and  number  of  the  interlopers.  Besides,  it  was  more 
glorious  to  wade  across  to  the  island  from  their  side  of 
the  river.  They  undressed  and  gathered  their  clothes 
up  into  a  bundle,  which  they  put  on  their  heads  and 
held  there  with  one  hand,  while  they  used  the  other  for 
swimming,  when  they  came  to  a  place  beyond  their 
depth.  Then  they  dressed  again,  and  stretched  them- 
selves under  the  cottonwood-trees  and  sycamores,  and 
played  games  and  told  stories,  and  longed  for  a  gun  to 
kill  the  blackbirds  which  nested  in  the  high  tops,  and  at 
nightfall  made  such  a  clamor  in  getting  to  roost  that  it 
almost  deafened  you. 

My  boy  never  distinctly  knew  what  formed  that  isl- 
and, but  as  there  was  a  mill  there,  it  must  have  been 
made  by  the  mill-race  leaving  and  rejoining  the  river. 


THE   RIVER.  33 

It  was  enough  for  him  to  know  that  the  island  was 
there,  and  that  a  parrot  —  a  screaming,  whistling,  and 
laughing  parrot,  which  was  a  Pretty  Poll,  and  always 
Wanted  a  Cracker — dwelt  in  a  pretty  cottage,  almost 
hidden  in  trees,  just  below  the  end  of  the  island.  This 
parrot  had  the  old  Creole  gentleman  living  with  it  who 
owned  the  island,  and  whom  it  had  brought  from  New 
Orleans.  The  boys  met  him  now  and  then  as  he  walked 
abroad,  with  a  stick,  and  his  large  stomach  bowed  in 
front  of  him.  For  no  reason  under  the  sun  they  were 
afraid  of  him ;  perhaps  they  thought  he  resented  their 
parleys  with  the  parrot.  But  he  and  the  parrot  existed 
solely  to  amuse  and  to  frighten  them  ;  and  on  their  own 
side  of  the  river,  just  opposite  the  island,  there  were 
established  some  small  industries  for  their  entertain- 
ment and  advantage,  on  a  branch  of  the  Hydraulic.  I 
do  not  know  just  what  it  was  they  did  with  a  mustard- 
mill  that  was  there,  but  the  turning-shop  supplied  them 
with  a  deep  bed  of  elastic  shavings  just  under  the  bank, 
which  they  turned  somersaults  into,  when  they  were 
not  turning  them  into  the  river. 

I  wonder  what  sign  the  boys  who  read  this  have  for 
challenging  or  inviting  one  another  to  go  in  swimming. 
The  boys  in  the  Boy's  Town  used  to  make  the  motion 
of  swimming  with  both  arms  ;  or  they  held  up  the  fore- 
finger and  middle-finger  in  the  form  of  a  swallow-tail ; 
they  did  this  when  it  was  necessary  to  be  secret  about 
it,  as  in  school,  and  when  they  did  not  want  the  whole 
crowd  of  boys  to  come  along  ;  and  often  when  they  just 
pretended  they  did  not  want  some  one  to  know.  They 
really  had  to  be  secret  at  times,  for  some  of  the  boys 
were  not  allowed  to  go  in  at  all ;  others  were  forbidden 
to  go  in  more  than  once  or  twice  a  day  ;  and  as  they  all 


34  A   BOY'S   TOWN. 

had  to  go  in  at  least  three  or  four  times  a  day,  some 
sort  of  sign  had  to  be  used  that  was  understood  among 
themselves  alone.  Since  this  is  a  true  history,  I  had  bet- 
ter own  that  they  nearly  all,  at  one  time  or  other,  must 
have  told  lies  about  it,  either  before  or  after  the  fact, 
some  habitually,  some  only  in  great  extremity.  Here 
and  there  a  boy,  like  my  boy's  elder  brother,  would  not 
tell  lies  at  all,  even  about  going  in  swimming ;  but  by 
far  the  greater  number  bowed  to  their  hard  fate,  and 
told  them.  They  promised  that  they  would  not  go  in, 
and  then  they  said  that  they  had  not  been  in ;  but  Sin, 
for  which  they  had  made  this  sacrifice,  was  apt  to  betray 
them.  Either  they  got  their  shirts  on  wrong  side  out 
in  dressing,  or  else,  while  they  were  in,  some  enemy 
came  upon  them  and  tied  their  shirts.  There  are  few 
cruelties  which  public  opinion  in  the  boys'  world  con- 
demns, but  I  am  glad  to  remember,  to  their  honor,  that 
there  were  not  many  in  that  Boy's  Town  who  would  tie 
shirts ;  and  I  fervently  hope  that  there  is  no  boy  now 
living  who  would  do  it.  As  the  crime  is  probably  ex- 
tinct, I  will  say  that  in  those  wicked  days,  if  you  were 
such  a  miscreant,  and  there  was  some  boy  you  hated, 
you  stole  up  and  tied  the  hardest  kind  of  a  knot  in  one 
arm  or  both  arms  of  his  shirt.  Then,  if  the  Evil  One 
put  it  into  your  heart,  you  soaked  the  knot  in  water,  and 
pounded  it  with  a  stone. 

I  am  glad  to  know  that  in  the  days  when  he  was 
thoughtless  and  senseless  enough,  my  boy  never  was 
guilty  of  any  degree  of  this  meanness.  It  was  his  broth- 
er, I  suppose,  who  taught  him  to  abhor  it ;  and  perhaps 
it  was  his  own  suffering  from  it  in  part ;  for  he,  too,  some- 
times shed  bitter  tears  over  such  a  knot,  as  I  have  seen 
hapless  little  wretches  do,  tearing  at  it  with  their  nails 


THE  RIVER.  35 

and  gnawing  at  it  with,  their  teeth,  knowing  that  the 
time  was  passing  when  they  could  hope  to  hide  the  fact 
that  they  had  been  in  swimming,  and  foreseeing  no 
remedy  but  to  cut  off  the  sleeve  above  the  knot,  or  else 
put  on  their  clothes  without  the  shirt,  and  trust  to  un- 
tying the  knot  when  it  got  dry. 

There  must  have  been  a  lurking  anxiety  in  all  the 
boys'  hearts  when  they  went  in  without  leave,  or,  as 
my  boy  was  apt  to  do,  when  explicitly  forbidden.  He 
was  not  apt  at  lying,  I  dare  say,  and  so  he  took  the 
course  of  open  disobedience.  He  could  not  see  the 
danger  that  filled  the  home  hearts  with  fear  for  him,  and 
he  must  have  often  broken  the  law  and  been  forgiven, 
before  Justice  one  day  appeared  for  him  on  the  river- 
bank  and  called  him  away  from  his  stolen  joys.  It  was 
an  awful  moment,  and  it  covered  him  with  shame  before 
his  mates,  who  heartlessly  rejoiced,  as  children  do,  in 
the  doom  which  they  are  escaping.  That  sin,  at  least, 
he  fully  expiated ;  and  I  will  whisper  to  the  Young 
People  here  at  the  end  of  the  chapter,  that  somehow, 
soon  or  late,  our  sins  do  overtake  us,  and  insist  upon 
being  paid  for.  That  is  not  the  best  reason  for  not  sin- 
ning, but  it  is  well  to  know  it,  and  to  believe  it  in  our  > 
acts  as  well  as  our  thoughts.  You  will  find  people  to 
tell  you  that  things  only  happen  so  and  so.  It  may  be  ; 
only,  I  know  that  no  good  thing  ever  happened  to  hap* 
pen  to  me  when  I  had  done  wrong. 


IV. 

THE   CANAL   AND   ITS   BASIN. 

The  canal  came  from  Lake  Erie,  two  hundred  miles 
to  the  northward,  and  joined  the  Ohio  River  twenty  miles 
south  of  the  Boy's  Town.  For  a  time  my  boy's  father 
was  collector  of  tolls  on  it,  but  even  when  he  was  old 
enough  to  understand  that  his  father  held  this  State 
office  (the  canal  belonged  to  the  State)  because  he  had 
been  such  a  good  Whig,  and  published  the  "Whig  news- 
paper, he  could  not  grasp  the  notion  of  the  distance 
which  the  canal-boats  came  out  of  and  went  into.  He 
saw  them  come  and  he  saw  them  go ;  he  did  not  ask 
whence  or  whither;  his  wonder,  if  he  had  any  about 
them,  did  not  go  beyond  the  second  lock.  It  was  hard 
enough  to  get  it  to  the  head  of  the  Basin,  which  left  the 
canal  half  a  mile  or  so  to  the  eastward,  and  stretched 
down  into  the  town,  a  sheet  of  smooth  water,  fifteen  or 
twenty  feet  deep,  and  a  hundred  wide ;  his  sense  ached 
with  the  effort  of  conceiving  of  the  other  side  of  it. 
The  Basin  was  bordered  on  either  side  near  the  end 
by  pork -houses,  where  the  pork  was  cut  up  and 
packed,  and  then  lay  in  long  rows  of  barrels  on  the 
banks,  with  other  long  rows  of  salt-barrels,  and  yet 
other  long  rows  of  whiskey-barrels  ;  cooper-shops,  where 
the  barrels  were  made,  alternated  with  the  pork-houses. 
The  boats  brought  the  salt  and  carried  away  the  pork 
and  whiskey ;  but  the  boy's  practical  knowledge  of  them 


THE   CANAL   AND   ITS    BASIN.  37 

was  that  they  lay  there  for  the  boys  to  dive  off  of  when 
they  went  in  swimming,  and  to  fish  under.  The  water 
made  a  soft  tuck-tucking  at  the  sterns  of  the  boat,  and 
you  could  catch  sunfish,  if  you  were  the  right  kind  of  a 
boy,  or  the  wrong  kind ;  the  luck  seemed  to  go  a  good 
deal  with  boys  who  were  not  good  for  much  else.  Some 
of  the  boats  were  open  their  whole  length,  with  a  little 
cabin  at  the  stern,  and  these  pretended  to  be  for  carry- 
ing wood  and  stone,  but  really  again  were  for  the  use 
of  the  boys  after  a  hard  rain,  when  they  held  a  good 
deal  of  water,  and  you  could  pole  yourself  up  and  down 
on  the  loose  planks  in  them.  The  boys  formed  the  no- 
tion at  times  that  some  of  these  boats  were  abandoned 
by  their  owners,  and  they  were  apt  to  be  surprised  by 
their  sudden  return.  A  feeling  of  transgression  was 
mixed  up  with  the  joys  of  this  kind  of  navigation ;  per- 
haps some  of  the  boys  were  forbidden  it.  No  limit  was 
placed  on  their  swimming  in  the  Basin,  except  that  of 
the  law  which  prohibited  it  in  the  daytime,  as  the  Basin 
was  quite  in  the  heart  of  the  town.  In  the  warm  sum- 
mer nights  of  that  southerly  latitude,  the  water  swarmed 
with  laughing,  shouting,  screaming  boys,  who  plunged 
from  the  banks  and  rioted  in  the  delicious  water,  diving 
and  ducking,  flying  and  following,  safe  in  the  art  of 
swimming  which  all  of  them  knew.  They  turned  somer- 
saults from  the  decks  of  the  canal-boats ;  some  of  the 
boys  could  turn  double  somersaults,  and  one  boy  got  so 
far  as  to  turn  a  somersault  and  a  half ;  it  was  long  be- 
fore the  time  of  electric  lighting,  but  when  he  struck 
the  water  there  came  a  flash  that  seemed  to  illumine  the 
universe. 

I  am  afraid  that  the  Young  People  will  think  I  am 
telling  them  too  much  about  swimming.     But  in  the 


38  A  boy's  town. 

Boy's  Town  the  boys  really  led  a  kind  of  amphibious 
life,  and  as  long  as  the  long  summer  lasted  they  were 
almost  as  much  in  the  water  as  on  the  land.  The  Basin, 
however,  unlike  the  river,  had  a  winter  as  well  as  a  sum- 
mer climate,  and  one  of  the  very  first  things  that  my 
boy  could  remember  was  being  on  the  ice  there,  when 
a  young  man  caught  him  up  into  his  arms,  and  skated 
off  with  him  almost  as  far  away  as  the  canal.  He  re- 
membered the  fearful  joy  of  the  adventure,  and  the 
pride,  too ;  for  he  had  somehow  the  notion  that  this 
young  fellow  was  handsome  and  fine,  and  did  him  an 
honor  by  his  notice — so  soon  does  some  dim  notion  of 
worldly  splendor  turn  us  into  snobs !  The  next  thing 
was  his  own  attempt  at  skating,  when  he  was  set  down 
from  the  bank  by  his  brother,  full  of  a  vainglorious  con- 
fidence in  his  powers,  and  appeared  instantly  to  strike 
on  the  top  of  his  head.  Afterwards  he  learned  to  skate, 
but  he  did  not  know  when,  any  more  than  he  knew  just 
the  moment  of  learning  to  read  or  to  swim.  He  became 
passionately  fond  of  skating,  and  kept  at  it  all  day  long 
when  there  was  ice  for  it,  which  was  not  often  in  those 
soft  winters.  They  made  a  very  little  ice  go  a  long  way 
in  the  Boy's  Town ;  and  began  to  use  it  for  skating  as 
soon  as  there  was  a  glazing  of  it  on  the  Basin.  None  of 
them  ever  got  drowned  there  ;  though  a  boy  would  often 
start  from  one  bank  and  go  flying  to  the  other,  trusting 
his  speed  to  save  him,  while  the  thin  sheet  sank  and 
swayed,  but  never  actually  broke  under  him.  Usually  the 
ice  was  not  thick  enough  to  have  a  fire  built  on  it ;  and 
it  must  have  been  on  ice  which  was  just  strong  enough 
to  bear  that  my  boy  skated  all  one  bitter  afternoon  at 
Old  River,  without  a  fire  to  warm  by.  At  first  his  feet 
were  very  cold,  and  then  they  gradually  felt  less  cold, 


THE    CANAL   AND   ITS   BASIN.  39 

and  at  last  he  did  not  feel  them  at  all.  He  thought 
this  very  nice,  and  he  told  one  of  the  big  boys.  "  Why, 
your  feet  are  frozen  !"  said  the  big  boy,  and  he  dragged 
off  my  boy's  skates,  and  the  little  one  ran  all  the  long 
mile  home,  crazed  with  terror,  and  not  knowing  what 
moment  his  feet  might  drop  off  there  in  the  road.  His 
mother  plunged  them  in  a  bowl  of  ice-cold  water,  and 
then  rubbed  them  with  flannel,  and  so  thawed  them  out ; 
but  that  could  not  save  him  from  the  pain  of  their  com- 
ing to  :  it  was  intense,  and  there  must  have  been  a  time 
afterwards  when  he  did  not  use  his  feet. 

His  skates  themselves  were  of  a  sort  that  I  am  afraid 
boys  would  smile  at  nowadays.  When  you  went  to  get 
a  pair  of  skates  forty  or  fifty  years  ago,  you  did  not 
make  your  choice  between  a  Barney  &  Berry  and  an 
Acme,  which  fastened  on  with  the  turn  of  a  screw  or 
the  twist  of  a  clamp.  You  found  an  assortment  of  big 
and  little  sizes  of  solid  wood  bodies  with  guttered  blades 
turning  up  in  front  with  a  sharp  point,  or  perhaps  curl- 
ing over  above  the  toe.  In  this  case  they  sometimes 
ended  in  an  acorn ;  if  this  acorn  was  of  brass,  it  trans- 
figured the  boy  who  wore  that  skate ;  he  might  have 
been  otherwise  all  rags  and  patches,  but  the  brass  acorn 
made  him  splendid  from  head  to  foot.  When  you  had 
bought  your  skates,  you  took  them  to  a  carpenter,  and 
stood  awe-strickenly  about  while  he  pierced  the  wood 
with  strap-holes  ;  or  else  you  managed  to  bore  them 
through  with  a  hot  iron  yourself.  Then  you  took  them 
to  a  saddler,  and  got  him  to  make  straps  for  them  ;  that 
is,  if  you  were  rich,  and  your  father  let  you  have  a  quar- 
ter to  pay  for  the  job.  If  not,  you  put  strings  through, 
and  tied  your  skates  on.  They  were  always  coming  off, 
or  getting  crosswise  of  your  foot,  or  feeble-mindedly 


40  A  boy's  town. 

slumping  down  on  one  side  of  the  wood ;  but  it  did 
not  matter,  if  you  had  a  fire  on  the  ice,  fed  with  old 
barrels  and  boards  and  cooper's  shavings,  and  could  sit 
round  it  with  your  skates  on,  and  talk  and  tell  stories, 
between  your  flights  and  races  afar  ;  and  come  whizzing 
back  to  it  from  the  frozen  distance,  and  glide,  with  one 
foot  lifted,  almost  among  the  embers. 

Beyond  the  pork-houses,  and  up  farther  towards  the 
canal,  there  were  some  houses  under  the  Basin  banks. 
They  were  good  places  for  the  fever-and-ague  which 
people  had  in  those  days  without  knowing  it  was  ma- 
laria, or  suffering  it  to  interfere  much  with  the  pleasure 
and  business  of  life  ;  but  they  seemed  to  my  boy  bowers 
of  delight,  especially  one  where  there  was  a  bear,  chained 
to  a  weeping-willow,  and  another  where  there  was  a  fish- 
pond with  gold-fish  in  it.  He  expected  this  bear  to  get 
loose  and  eat  him,  but  that  could  not  spoil  his  pleasure 
in  seeing  the  bear  stand  on  his  hind-legs  and  open  his 
red  mouth,  as  I  have  seen  bears  do  when  you  wound 
them  up  by  a  keyhole  in  the  side.  In  fact,  a  toy  bear 
is  very  much  like  a  real  bear,  and  safer  to  have  round. 
The  boys  were  always  wanting  to  go  and  look  at  this 
bear,  but  he  was  not  so  exciting  as  the  daily  arrival  of 
the  Dayton  packet.  To  my  boy's  young  vision  this  craft 
was  of  such  incomparable  lightness  and  grace  as  no 
yacht  of  Mr.  Burgess's  could  rival.  When  she  came  in 
of  a  summer  evening  her  deck  was  thronged  with  peo- 
ple, and  the  captain  stood  with  his  right  foot  on  the 
spring-catch  that  held  the  tow-rope.  The  water  curled 
away  on  either  side  of  her  sharp  prow,  that  cut  its  way 
onward  at  the  full  rate  of  five  miles  an  hour,  and  the 
team  came  swinging  down  the  tow-path  at  a  gallant 
trot,  the  driver  sitting  the  hindmost  horse  of  three,  and 


THE   CANAL   AND   ITS   BASIN.  41 

cracking  his  long-lashed  whip  with  loud  explosions,  as  he 
whirled  its  snaky  spirals  in  the  air.  All  the  boys  in  town 
were  there,  meekly  proud  to  be  ordered  out  of  his  way, 
to  break  and  fly  before  his  volleyed  oaths  and  far  be- 
fore his  horses'  feet ;  and  suddenly  the  captain  pressed 
his  foot  on  the  spring  and  released  the  tow-rope.  The 
driver  kept  on  to  the  stable  with  unslackened  speed, 
and  the  line  followed  him,  swishing  and  skating  over  the 
water,  while  the  steersman  put  his  helm  hard  aport, 
and  the  packet  rounded  to,  and  swam  softly  and  slowly 
up  to  her  moorings.  No  steamer  arrives  from  Europe 
now  with  such  thrilling  majesty. 

The  canal-boatmen  were  all  an  heroic  race,  and  the 
boys  humbly  hoped  that  some  day,  if  they  proved  wor- 
thy, they  might  grow  up  to  be  drivers ;  not  indeed 
packet-drivers ;  they  were  not  so  conceited  as  that ;  but 
freight-boat  drivers,  of  two  horses,  perhaps,  but  gladly  of 
one.  High  or  low,  the  drivers  had  a  great  deal  of  leis^ 
ure,  which  commended  their  calling  to  the  boyish  fancy; 
and  my  boy  saw  them,  with  a  longing  to  speak  to  them, 
even  to  approach  them,  never  satisfied,  while  they 
amused  the  long  summer  afternoon  in  the  shade  of 
the  tavern  by  a  game  of  skill  peculiar  to  them.  They 
put  a  tack  into  a  whiplash,  and  then,  whirling  it  round 
and  round,  drove  it  to  the  head  in  a  target  marked 
out  on  the  weather-boarding.  Some  of  them  had  a  per- 
fect aim ;  and  in  fact  it  was  a  very  pretty  feat,  and  well 
worth  seeing. 

Another  feat,  which  the  pioneers  of  the  region  had 
probably  learned  from  the  Indians,  was  throwing  the 
axe.  The  thrower  caught  the  axe  by  the  end  of  the 
helve,  and  with  a  dextrous  twirl  sent  it  flying  through 
the  air,  and  struck  its  edge  into  whatever  object  he 


42  A   BOY'S   TOWN. 

aimed  at — usually  a  tree.  Two  of  the  Basin  loafers 
were  brothers,  and  they  were  always  quarrelling  and 
often  fighting.  One  was  of  the  unhappy  fraternity  of 
town-drunkards,  and  somehow  the  boys  thought  him  a 
finer  fellow  than  the  other,  whom  somehow  they  con- 
sidered "mean,"  and  they  were  always  of  his  side  in 
their  controversies.  One  afternoon  these  brothers  quar- 
relled a  long  time,  and  then  the  sober  brother  retired 
to  the  doorway  of  a  pork-house,  where  he  stood,  proba- 
bly brooding  upon  his  injuries,  when  the  drunkard,  who 
had  remained  near  the  tavern,  suddenly  caught  up  an 
axe  and  flung  it ;  the  boys  saw  it  sail  across  the  corner 
of  the  Basin,  and  strike  in  the  door  just  above  his 
brother's  head.  This  one  did  not  lose  an  instant; 
while  the  axe  still  quivered  in  the  wood,  he  hurled 
himself  upon  the  drunkard,  and  did  that  justice  on 
him  which  he  would  not  ask  from  the  law,  perhaps 
because  it  was  a  family  affair ;  perhaps  because  those 
wretched  men  were  no  more  under  the  law  than  the 
boys  were. 

I  do  not  mean  that  there  was  no  law  for  the  boys, 
for  it  was  manifest  to  their  terror  in  two  officers  whom 
they  knew  as  constables,  and  who  may  have  reigned 
one  after  another,  or  together,  with  full  power  of  life  and 
death  over  them,  as  they  felt ;  but  who  in  a  commu- 
nity mainly  so  peaceful  acted  upon  Dogberry's  advice, 
and  made  and  meddled  with  rogues  as  little  as  they 
could.  From  time  to  time  it  was  known  among  the  boys 
that  you  would  be  taken  up  if  you  went  in  swimming  in- 
side of  the  corporation  line,  and  for  a  while  they  would 
be  careful  to  keep  beyond  it ;  but  this  could  not  last ; 
they  were  soon  back  in  the  old  places,  and  I  suppose  no 
arrests  were  ever  really  made.     They  did,  indeed,  hear 


THE   CANAL  AND   ITS    BASIN.  43 

once  that  Old  Griffin,  as  they  called  him,  caught  a  cer- 
tain hoy  in  the  river  before  dark,  and  carried  him  up 
through  the  town  to  his  own  home  naked.  Of  course 
no  such  thing  ever  happened ;  but  the  boys  believed 
it,  and  it  froze  my  boy's  soul  with  fear ;  all  the  more 
because  this  constable  was  a  cabinet-maker  and  made 
coffins ;  from  his  father's  printing-office  the  boy  could 
hear  the  long  slide  of  his  plane  over  the  wood,  and 
he  could  smell  the  varnish  on  the  boards. 

I  dare  say  Old  Griffin  was  a  kindly  man  enough, 
and  not  very  old ;  and  I  suppose  that  the  other  consta- 
ble, as  known  to  his  family  and  friends,  was  not  at  all 
the  gloomy  headsman  he  appeared  to  the  boys.  When 
he  became  constable  (they  had  not  the  least  notion  how 
a  man  became  constable)  they  heard  that  his  rule  was 
to  be  marked  by  unwonted  severity  against  the  crime 
of  going  in  swimming  inside  the  corporation  line,  and 
so  they  kept  strictly  to  the  letter  of  the  law.  But  one 
day  some  of  them  found  themselves  in  the  water  be- 
yond the  First  Lock,  when  the  constable  appeared  on 
the  tow-path,  suddenly,  as  if  he  and  his  horse  had  come 
up  out  of  the  ground.  He  told  them  that  he  had  got 
them  now,  and  he  ordered  them  to  come  along  with 
him ;  he  remained  there  amusing  himself  with  their 
tears,  their  prayers,  and  then  vanished  again.  Heaven 
knows  how  they  lived  through  it ;  but  they  must  have 
got  safely  home  in  the  usual  way,  and  life  must  have 
gone  on  as  before.  No  doubt  the  man  did  not  realize 
the  torture  he  put  them  to ;  but  it  was  a  cruel  thing ; 
and  I  never  have  any  patience  with  people  who  exag- 
gerate a  child's  offence  to  it,  and  make  it  feel  itself  a 
wicked  criminal  for  some  little  act  of  scarcely  any  con- 
sequence.    If  we  elders  stand  here  in  the  place  of  th© 


44 


A   BOY'S   TOWN. 


Heavenly  Father  towards  those  younger  children  of  His, 
He  will  not  hold  us  guiltless  when  we  obscure  for  them 
the  important  difference  between  a  great  and  a  small 
misdeed,  or  wring  their  souls,  fear-clouded  as  they  al- 
V  ays  are,  with  a  sense  of  perdition  for  no  real  sin. 


liikr 


(Mil, 

THE  SIX-MILE  LEVEL. 


HE  TOLD  THEM  THAT  HE  HAD  GOT  THEM 
NOW." 


V. 

THE   HYDRAULIC   AND    ITS   RESERVOIRS. — OLD    RIVER. 

There  were  two  branches  of  the  Hydraulic :  one 
followed  the  course  of  the  Miami,  from  some  un- 
known point  to  the  northward,  on  the  level  of  its 
high  bank,  and  joined  the  other  where  it  emptied 
into  the  river  just  above  the  bridge.  This  last  came 
down  what  had  been  a  street,  and  it  must  have  been 
very  pretty  to  have  these  two  swift  streams  of  clear 
water  rushing  through  the  little  town,  under  the  cul- 
verts, and  between  the  stone  walls  of  its  banks.  But 
what  a  boy  mainly  cares  for  in  a  thing  is  use,  and  the 
boys  tried  to  make  some  use  of  the  Hydraulic,  since 
it  was  there  to  find  what  they  could  do  with  it.  Of 
course  they  were  aware  of  the  mills  dotted  along  its 
course,  and  they  knew  that  it  ran  them ;  but  I  do  not 
believe  any  of  them  thought  that  it  was  built  merely  to 
run  flour-mills  and  saw-mills  and  cotton-mills.  They 
did  what  they  could  to  find  out  its  real  use,  but  they 
could  make  very  little  of  it.  The  current  was  so  rapid 
that  it  would  not  freeze  in  winter,  and  in  summer  they 
could  not  go  in  swimming  in  it  by  day,  because  it  was 
so  public,  and  at  night  the  Basin  had  more  attractions. 
There  was  danger  of  cutting  your  feet  on  the  broken 
glass  and  crockery  which  people  threw  into  the  Hy- 
draulic, and  though  the  edges  of  the  culverts  were  good 
for  jumping  off  of,  the  boys  did  not  find  them  of  much 


46  A  boy's  town. 

practical  value.  Sometimes  you  could  catch  sunfish  in 
the  Hydraulic,  "but  it  was  generally  too  swift,  and  the 
only  thing  you  could  depend  upon  was  catching  craw- 
fish. These  abounded  so  that  if  you  dropped  a  string 
with  a  bit  of  meat  on  it  into  the  water  anywhere,  you 
could  pull  it  up  again  with  two  or  three  crawfish  hang- 
ing to  it.  The  boys  could  not  begin  to  use  them  all 
for  bait,  which  was  the  only  use  their  Creator  seemed 
to  have  designed  them  for ;  but  they  had  vaguely  un- 
derstood that  people  somewhere  ate  them,  or  something 
like  them,  though  they  had  never  known  even  the  name 
of  lobsters  ;  and  they  always  intended  to  get  their  moth- 
ers to  have  them  cooked  for  them.  None  of  them  ever 
did. 

They  could  sometimes,  under  high  favor  of  fortune, 
push  a  dog  into  the  Hydraulic,  or  get  him  to  jump  in 
after  a  stick ;  and  then  have  the  excitement  of  follow- 
ing him  from  one  culvert  to  another,  till  he  found  a 
foothold  and  scrambled  out.  Once  my  boy  saw  a  chick- 
en cock  sailing  serenely  down  the  current ;  he  was  told 
that  he  had  been  given  brandy,  and  that  brandy  would 
enable  a  chicken  to  swim ;  but  probably  this  was  not 
true.  Another  time,  a  tremendous  time,  a  boy  was 
standing  at  the  brink  of  a  culvert,  when  one  of  his 
mates  dared  another  to  push  him  in.  In  those  days 
the  boys  attached  peculiar  ideas  of  dishonor  to  taking 
a  dare.  They  said,  and  in  some  sort  they  believed,  that 
a  boy  who  would  take  a  dare  would  steal  sheep.  I  do 
not  now  see  why  this  should  follow.  In  this  case,  the 
high  spirit  who  was  challenged  felt  nothing  base  in  run- 
ning up  behind  his  unsuspecting  friend  and  popping 
him  into  the  water,  and  I  have  no  doubt  the  victim 
considered  the  affair  in  the  right  light  when  he  found 


THE   HYDRAULIC   AND   ITS    RESERVOIRS.  47 

that  it  was  a  dare.  He  drifted  under  the  culvert,  and 
when  he  came  out  he  swiftly  scaled  the  wall  below, 
and  took  after  the  boy  who  had  pushed  him  in ;  of 
course  this  one  had  the  start.  No  great  harm  was 
done ;  everybody  could  swim,  and  a  boy's  summer  cos- 
tume in  that  hot  climate  was  made  up  of  a  shirt  and 
trousers  and  a  straw  hat ;  no  boy  who  had  any  regard 
for  his  social  standing  wore  shoes  or  stockings,  and  as 
they  were  all  pretty  proud,  they  all  went  barefoot  from 
April  till  October. 

The  custom  of  going  barefoot  must  have  come  from 
the  South,  where  it  used  to  be  so  common,  and  also 
from  the  primitive  pioneer  times  which  were  so  near 
my  boy's  time,  fifty  years  ago.  The  South  character- 
ized the  thinking  and  feeling  of  the  Boy's  Town,  far 
more  than  the  North.  Most  of  the  people  were  of 
Southern  extraction,  from  Kentucky  or  Virginia,  when 
they  were  not  from  Pennsylvania  or  New  Jersey.  There 
might  have  been  other  New  England  families,  but  the 
boys  only  knew  of  one — that  of  the  blacksmith  whose 
shop  they  liked  to  haunt.  His  children  were  heard  to 
dispute  about  an  animal  they  had  seen,  and  one  of  them 
said,  "  Tell  ye  'twa'n't  a  squeerrel ;  'twas  a  maouse ;" 
and  the  boys  had  that  for  a  by-word.  They  despised 
Yankees  as  a  mean-spirited  race,  who  were  stingy  and 
would  cheat,  and  would  not  hit  you  if  you  told  them 
they  lied.  A  person  must  always  hit  a  person  who  told 
him  he  lied ;  but  even  if  you  called  a  Yankee  a  fighting 
liar  (the  worst  form  of  this  insult),  he  would  not  hit 
you,  but  just  call  you  a  liar  back.  My  boy  long  ac- 
cepted these  ideas  of  New  England  as  truly  representa- 
tive of  the  sectional  character.  Perhaps  they  were  as 
fair  as  some  ideas  of  the  West  which  he  afterwards 


48  A   BOY'S    TOWN. 

found  entertained  in  New  England  ;  but  they  were  false 
and  stupid  all  the  same. 

If  the  boys  could  do  little  with  the  Hydraulic,  they 
were  at  no  loss  in  regard  to  the  Reservoirs,  into  which 
its  feeding  waters  were  gathered  and  held  in  reserve, 
I  suppose,  against  a  time  of  drought.  There  was  the 
Little  Reservoir  first,  and  then  a  mile  beyond  it  the 
Big  Reservoir,  and  there  was  nearly  always  a  large  flat 
boat  on  each  which  was  used  for  repairing  the  banks, 
but  which  the  boys  employed  as  a  pleasure-barge.  It 
seemed  in  some  natural  way  to  belong  to  them,  and  yet 
they  liad  a  feeling  of  something  clandestine  in  pushing 
out  on  the  Reservoir  in  it.  Once  they  filled  its  broad, 
shallow  hold  with  straw  from  a  neighboring  oatfield, 
and  spent  a  long  golden  afternoon  in  simply  lying  un- 
der the  hot  September  sun,  in  the  middle  of  the  Reser- 
voir, and  telling  stories.  My  boy  then  learned,  for  the 
first  time,  that  there  was  such  a  book  as  the  "  Arabian 
Nights ;"  one  of  the  other  boys  told  stories  out  of  it, 
and  he  inferred  that  the  sole  copy  in  existence  belonged 
to  this  boy.  He  knew  that  they  all  had  school-books 
alike,  but  it  did  not  occur  to  him  that  a  book  which 
was  not  a  Reader  or  a  Speller  was  ever  duplicated.  They 
did  nothing  with  their  boat  except  loll  in  it  and  tell  sto- 
ries, and  as  there  was  no  current  in  the  Reservoir,  they 
must  have  remained  pretty  much  in  the  same  place ; 
but  they  had  a  sense  of  the  wildest  adventure,  which 
mounted  to  frenzy,  when  some  men  rose  out  of  the 
earth  on  the  shore,  and  shouted  at  them,  "  Hello,  there  ! 
What  are  you  doing  with  that  boat  I"  They  must  have 
had  an  oar ;  at  any  rate,  they  got  to  the  opposite  bank, 
and,  springing  to  land,  fled  somewhere  into  the  vaguest 
past. 


THE    HYDRAULIC    AND    ITS    RESERVOIRS.  49 

The  boys  went  in  swimming  in  the  Little  Reservoir 
when  they  were  not  in  the  River  or  the  Basin ;  and 
they  fished  in  the  Big  Reservoir,  where  the  sunfish  bit 
eagerly.  There  were  large  trees  standing  in  the  hol- 
low which  became  the  bed  of  the  Reservoir,  and  these 
died  when  the  water  was  let  in  around  them,  and  gave 
the  stretch  of  quiet  waters  a  strange,  weird  look ;  about 
their  bases  was  the  best  kind  of  place  for  sunfish,  and 
even  for  bass.  Of  course  the  boys  never  caught  any 
bass ;  that  honor  was  reserved  for  men  of  the  kind  I 
have  mentioned.  It  was  several  years  before  the  catfish 
got  in,  and  then  they  were  mud-cats ;  but  the  boys  had 
great  luck  with  sunfish  there  and  in  the  pools  about 
the  flood-gates,  where  there  was  always  some  leakage, 
and  where  my  boy  once  caught  a  whole  string  of  live 
fish  which  had  got  away  from  some  other  boy,  perhaps 
weeks  before  ;  they  were  all  swimming  about,  in  a  lively 
way,  and  the  largest  hungrily  took  his  bait.  The  great 
pleasure  of  fishing  in  these  pools  was  that  the  waters 
were  so  clear  you  could  see  the  fat,  gleaming  fellows 
at  the  bottom,  nosing  round  your  hook,  and  going  off 
and  coming  back  several  times  before  they  made  up 
their  minds  to  bite.  It  seems  now  impossible  that 
my  boy  could  ever  have  taken  pleasure  in  the  capt- 
ure of  these  poor  creatures.  I  know  that  there  are 
grown  people,  and  very  good,  kind  men,  too,  who  de- 
fend and  celebrate  the  sport,  and  value  themselves  on 
their  skill  in  it ;  but  I  think  it  tolerable  only  in  boys, 
who  are  cruel  because  they  are  thoughtless.  It  is  not 
probable  that  any  lower  organism 

"In  corporal  sufferance  feels  a  pang  as  great 
As  when  a  giant  dies," 

but  still,  I  believe  that  even  a  fish  knows  a  dumb  agony 


50  a  boy's  town. 

from  the  barbs  of  tbe  book  which  would  take  some- 
what from  the  captor's  joy  if  he  could  but  realize  it. 

There  was,  of  course,  a  time  when  the  Hydraulic 
and  the  Reservoirs  were  not  where  they  afterwards  ap- 
peared always  to  have  been.  My  boy  could  dimly  recall 
the  day  when  the  water  was  first  let  into  the  Hydraulic, 
and  the  little  fellows  ran  along  its  sides  to  keep  abreast 
of  the  current,  as  they  easily  could ;  and  he  could  see 
more  vividly  the  tumult  which  a  break  in  the  embank- 
ment of  the  Little  Reservoir  caused.  The  whole  town 
rushed  to  the  spot,  or  at  least  all  the  boys  in  it  did,  and 
a  great  force  of  men  besides,  with  shovels  and  wheel- 
barrows, and  bundles  of  brush  and  straw,  and  heavy 
logs,  and  heaped  them  into  the  crevasse,  and  piled 
earth  on  them.  The  men  threw  off  their  coats  and  all 
joined  in  the  work ;  a  great  local  politician  led  off  in 
his  shirt-sleeves ;  and  it  was  as  if  my  boy  should  now 
see  the  Emperor  of  Germany  in  his  shirt-sleeves  push- 
ing a  wheelbarrow,  so  high  above  all  other  men  had 
that  exalted  Whig  always  been  to  him.  But  the  Hy- 
draulic, I  believe,  was  a  town  work,  and  everybody  felt 
himself  an  owner  in  it,  and  hoped  to  share  in  the  pros- 
perity which  it  should  bring  to  all.  It  made  the  people 
so  far  one  family,  as  every  public  work  which  they  own 
in  common  always  does  ;  it  made  them  brothers  and 
equals,  as  private  property  never  does. 

Of  course  the  boys  rose  to  no  such  conception  of  the 
fact  before  their  eyes.  I  suspect  that  in  their  secret 
hearts  they  would  have  been  glad  to  have  seen  that  whole 
embankment  washed  away,  for  the  excitement's  sake, 
and  for  the  hope  of  catching  the  fish  that  would  be  left 
flopping  at  the  bottom  of  the  Reservoir  when  the  waters 
were  drained  out.    I  think  that  these  waters  were  brought 


'THAT   HONOR   WAS  RESERVED   FOR   MEN    OF  THE   KIND   I   HAVE 
MENTIONED  " 


OLD   RIVER.  51 

somehow  from  Old  River,  but  I  am  not  sure  how.  Old 
River  was  very  far  away,  and  my  boy  was  never  there 
much,  and  knew  little  of  the  weird  region  it  bounded. 
Once  he  went  in  swimming  in  it,  but  the  still,  clear 
waters  were  strangely  cold,  and  not  like  those  of  the 
friendly  Miami.  Once,  also,  when  the  boys  had  gone 
into  the  vast  woods  of  that  measureless  continent  which 
they  called  the  Island,  for  pawpaws  or  for  hickory-nuts, 
or  maybe  buckeyes,  they  got  lost ;  and  while  they  ran 
about  in  terror,  they  heard  the  distant  lowing  and  bel- 
lowing of  cattle.  They  knew  somehow,  as  boys  know 
everything,  that  the  leader  of  the  herd,  which  ranged 
those  woods  in  a  half -savage  freedom,  was  a  vicious  bull, 
and  as  the  lowing  and  bellowing  sounded  nearer,  they 
huddled  together  in  the  wildest  dismay.  Some  were  for 
running,  some  for  getting  over  a  fence  near  by ;  but 
they  could  not  tell  which  side  of  the  fence  the  herd  was 
on.  In  the  primitive  piety  of  childhood  my  boy  sug- 
gested prayer  as  something  that  had  served  people  in 
extremity,  and  he  believed  that  it  was  the  only  hope 
left.  Another  boy  laughed,  and  began  to  climb  a  tree  ; 
the  rest,  who  had  received  my  boy's  suggestion  favor- 
ably, instantly  followed  his  example  ;  in  fact,  he  climbed 
a  tree  himself.  The  herd  came  slowly  up,  and  when  they 
reached  the  boys'  refuge  they  behaved  with  all  the  fury 
that  could  have  been  expected — they  trampled  and  tossed 
the  bags  that  held  the  pawpaws  or  buckeyes  or  hickory- 
nuts  ;  they  gored  the  trees  where  the  boys  hung  trem- 
bling ;  they  pawed  and  tossed  the  soft  earth  below ; 
and  then  they  must  have  gone  away,  and  given  them  up 
as  hopeless.  My  boy  never  had  the  least  notion  how 
he  got  home ;  and  I  dare  say  he  was  very  young  when 
he  began  these  excursions  to  the  woods. 


52  A    BOY  S   TOWN. 

In  some  places  Old  River  was  a  stagnant  pool,  cov- 
ered with  thick  green  scum,  and  filled  with  frogs.  The 
son  of  one  of  the  tavern-keepers  was  skilled  in  catch- 
ing them,  and  I  fancy  supplied  them  to  his  father's 
table ;  the  important  fact  was  his  taking  them,  which 
he  did  by  baiting  a  cluster  of  three  hooks  with  red 
flannel,  and  dropping  them  at  the  end  of  a  fish-line  be- 
fore a  frog.  The  fated  croaker  plunged  at  the  brilliant 
bait,  and  was  caught  in  the  breast ;  even  as  a  small  boy, 
my  boy  thought  it  a  cruel  sight.  The  boys  pretended 
that  the  old  frogs  said,  whenever  this  frog-catching  boy 
came  in  sight,  "  Here  comes  Hawkins ! — here  comes 
Hawkins  !  Look  out ! — look  out !"  and  a  row  of  boys, 
perched  on  a  log  in  the  water,  would  sound  this  warn- 
ing in  mockery  of  the  frogs  or  their  foe,  and  plump  one 
after  another  in  the  depths,  as  frogs  follow  their  leader 
in  swift  succession.  They  had  nothing  against  Hawkins. 
They  all  liked  him,  for  he  was  a  droll,  good-natured  fel- 
low, always  up  to  some  pleasantry.  One  day  he  laughed 
out  in  school.  "  Was  that  you  laughed,  Henry  ?"  asked 
the  teacher,  with  unerring  suspicion.  "  I  wras  only  smil- 
ing, Mr.  Slack."  "  The  next  time,  see  that  you  don't 
smile  so  loud,"  said  Mr.  Slack,  and  forgave  him,  as  any 
one  who  saw  his  honest  face  must  have  wished  to  do. 
They  called  him  Old  Hawkins,  for  fondness ;  and  while 
my  boy  shuddered  at  him  for  his  way  of  catching  frogs, 
he  was  in  love  with  him  for  his  laughing  eyes  and  the 
kindly  ways  he  had,  especially  with  the  little  boys. 


VI. 

SCHOOLS   AND   TEACHERS. 

My  boy  had  not  a  great  deal  to  do  with  schools  after 
his  docile  childhood.  When  he  began  to  run  wild  with 
the  other  boys  he  preferred  their  savage  freedom ;  and 
lie  got  out  of  going  to  school  by  most  of  the  devices 
they  used.  He  had  never  quite  the  hardihood  to  play 
truant,  but  he  was  subject  to  sudden  attacks  of  sickness, 
which  came  on  about  school-time  and  went  off  towards 
the  middle  of  the  forenoon  or  afternoon  in  a  very  strange 
manner.  I  suppose  that  such  complaints  are  unknown 
at  the  present  time,  but  the  Young  People's  fathers  can 
tell  them  how  much  suffering  they  used  to  cause  among 
boys.  At  the  age  when  my  boy  was  beginning  to  out- 
grow them  he  was  taken  into  his  father's  printing-office, 
and  he  completed  his  recovery  and  his  education  there. 
But  all  through  the  years  when  he  lived  in  the  Boy's 
Town  he  had  intervals  of  schooling,  which  broke  in 
upon  the  swimming  and  the  skating,  of  course,  but  were 
not  altogether  unpleasant  or  unprofitable. 

They  began,  as  they  are  apt  to  do,  with  lessons  in  a 
private  house,  where  a  lady  taught  several  other  chil- 
dren, and  where  he  possibly  learned  to  read ;  though 
he  could  only  remember  being  set  on  a  platform  in  pun- 
ishment for  some  forgotten  offence.  After  that  he  went 
to  school  in  the  basement  of  a  church,  where  a  number 
of  boys  and  girls  were  taught  by  a  master  who  knew 


54  A  boy's  town. 

how  to  endear  study  at  least  to  my  boy.  There  was  a 
garden  outside  of  the  schoolroom ;  hollyhocks  grew  in 
it,  and  the  boys  gathered  the  little  cheeses,  as  they  called 
the  seed-buttons  which  form  when  the  flowers  drop  off, 
and  ate  them,  because  boys  will  eat  anything,  and  not 
because  they  liked  them.  With  the  fact  of  this  garden 
is  mixed  a  sense  of  drowsy  heat  and  summer  light,  and 
that  is  all,  except  the  blackboard  at  the  end  of  the  room 
and  a  big  girl  doing  sums  at  it ;  and  the  wonder  why 
the  teacher  smiled  when  he  read  in  one  of  the  girls' 
compositions  a  phrase  about  forging  puddings  and  pies ; 
my  boy  did  not  know  what  forging  meant,  so  he  must 
have  been  very  young.  But  he  had  a  zeal  for  learning, 
and  somehow  he  took  a  prize  in  geography — a  science 
in  which  he  was  never  afterwards  remarkable.  The 
prize  was  a  little  history  of  Lexington,  Mass.,  which  the 
teacher  gave  him,  perhaps  because  Lexington  may  have 
been  his  native  town ;  but  the  history  must  have  been 
very  dryly  told,  for  not  a  fact  of  it  remained  in  the 
boy's  mind.  He  was  vaguely  disappointed  in  the  book, 
but  he  valued  it  for  the  teacher's  sake  whom  he  was 
secretly  very  fond  of,  and  who  had  no  doubt  won  the 
child's  heart  by  some  flattering  notice.  He  thought  it 
a  great  happiness  to  follow  him,  when  the  teacher  gave 
up  this  school,  and  took  charge  of  one  of  the  public 
schools ;  but  it  was  not  the  same  there ;  the  teacher 
could  not  distinguish  him  in  that  multitude  of  boys  and 
girls.  He  did  himself  a  little  honor  in  spelling,  but  he 
won  no  praise,  and  he  disgraced  himself  then  as  always 
in  arithmetic.  He  sank  into  the  common  herd  of  me- 
diocrities ;  and  then,  when  his  family  went  to  live  in  an- 
other part  of  the  town,  he  began  to  go  to  another  school. 
He  had  felt  that  the  teacher  belonged  to  him,  and  it 


SCHOOLS   AND   TBAOHEBS.  55 

must  have  been  a  pang  to  find  him  so  estranged.  But 
he  was  a  kind  man,  and  long  afterwards  he  had  a  friend- 
ly smile  and  word  for  the  boy  when  they  met ;  and  then 
all  at  once  he  ceased  to  be,  as  men  and  things  do  in  a 
boy's  world. 

The  other  school  was  another  private  school ;  and  it 
was  doubtless  a  school  of  high  grade  in  some  things, 
for  it  was  called  the  Academy.  But  there  was  provision 
for  the  youngest  beginners  in  a  lower  room,  and  for  a 
while  my  boy  went  there.  Before  school  opened  in  the 
afternoon,  the  children  tried  to  roast  apples  on  the  stove, 
but  there  never  was  time,  and  they  had  to  eat  them  half 
raw.  In  the  singing-class  there  was  a  boy  who  wore 
his  hair  so  enviably  long  that  he  could  toss  it  on  his 
"aeck  as  he  wheeled  in  the  march  of  the  class  round  the 
room ;  his  father  kept  a  store  and  he  brought  candy  to 
school.  They  sang  "  Scotland's  burning  !  Pour  on  wa- 
ter !"  and  "  Home,  home !  Dearest  and  happiest  home !" 
No  doubt  they  did  other  things,  but  none  of  them  re- 
mained in  my  boy's  mind ;  and  when  he  was  promoted 
to  the  upper  room  very  little  more  was  added.  He 
studied  Philosophy,  as  it  was  called,  and  he  learned,  as 
much  from  the  picture  as  the  text,  that  you  could  not 
make  a  boat  go  by  filling  her  sail  from  bellows  on 
board ;  he  did  not  see  why.  But  he  was  chiefly  con- 
cerned with  his  fears  about  the  Chemical  Room,  where  I 
suppose  some  chemical  apparatus  must  have  been  kept, 
but  where  the  big  boys  were  taken  to  be  whipped.  It 
was  a  place  of  dreadful  execution  to  him,  and  when  he 
was  once  sent  to  the  Chemical  Room,  and  shut  up  there, 
because  he  was  crying,  and  because,  as  he  explained,  he 
could  not  stop  crying  without  a  handkerchief,  and  he 
had  none  with  him,  he  never  exnected  to  come  out  alive. 


56  A   BOY'S   TOWN. 

In  fact,  as  I  have  said,  he  dwelt  in  a  Avorld  of  terrors; 
and  I  doubt  if  some  of  the  big  boys  who  were  taken  there 
to  be  whipped  underwent  so  much  as  he  in  being  merely 
taken  to  the  place  where  they  had  been  whipped.  At 
the  same  time,  while  he  cowered  along  in  the  shadow  of 
unreal  dangers,  he  had  a  boy's  boldness  with  most  of 
the  real  ones,  and  he  knew  how  to  resent  an  indignity 
even  at  the  hands  of  the  teacher  who  could  send  him  to 
the  Chemical  Room  at  pleasure.  He  knew  what  belonged 
to  him  as  a  small  boy  of  honor,  and  one  thing  was,  not 
to  be  tamely  put  back  from  a  higher  to  a  lower  place  in 
his  studies.  I  dare  say  that  boys  do  not  mind  this  now ; 
they  must  have  grown  ever  so  much  wiser  since  my  boy 
went  to  school ;  but  in  his  time,  when  you  were  put 
back,  say  from  the  Third  Reader  to  the  Second  Reader, 
you  took  your  books  and  left  school.  That  was  what 
the  other  boys  expected  of  you,  and  it  was  the  only 
thing  for  you  to  do  if  you  had  the  least  self-respect,  for 
you  were  put  back  to  the  Second  Reader  after  having 
failed  to  read  the  Third,  and  it  was  a  public  shame 
which  nothing  but  leaving  that  school  could  wipe  out. 
The  other  boys  would  have  a  right  to  mock  you  if  you 
did  not  do  it ;  and  as  soon  as  the  class  was  dismissed 
you  went  to  your  desk  as  haughtily  as  you  could,  and 
began  putting  your  books  and  your  slate  and  your  ink- 
stand together,  with  defiant  glances  at  the  teacher ;  and 
then  when  cwelve  o'clock  came,  or  four  o'clock,  and  the 
school  was  let  out,  you  tucked  the  bundle  under  your 
arm  and  marched  out  of  the  room,  with  as  much  majesty 
as  could  be  made  to  comport  with  a  chip  hat  and  bare 
feet;  and  as  you  passed  the  teacher  you  gave  a  twist 
of  the  head  that  was  meant  to  carry  dismay  to  the  heart 
of  your  enemy.     I  note  all  these  particulars  carefully, 


SCHOOLS   AND   TEACHEES.  51 

so  as  to  show  the  boys  of  the  present  day  what  fools 
the  boys  of  the  past  were ;  though  I  think  they  will 
hardly  believe  it.  My  boy  was  once  that  kind  of  fool ; 
but  not  twice.  He  left  school  with  all  his  things  at 
twelve  o'clock,  and  he  returned  with  them  at  one ;  for 
his  father  and  mother  did  not  agree  with  him  about  the 
teacher's  behavior  in  putting  him  back.  No  boy's  father 
and  mother  agreed  with  him  on  this  point ;  every  boy 
returned  in  just  the  same  way ;  but  somehow  the  insult 
had  been  wiped  out  by  the  mere  act  of  self-assertion, 
and  a  boy  kept  his  standing  in  the  world  as  he  could 
never  have  done  if  he  had  not  left  school  when  he  was 
put  back. 

The  Hydraulic  ran  alongside  of  the  Academy,  and  at 
recess  the  boys  had  a  good  deal  of  fun  with  it,  one  way 
and  another,  sailing  shingles  with  stones  on  them,  and 
watching  them  go  under  one  end  of  the  culvert  and 
come  out  of  the  other,  or  simply  throwing  rocks  into 
the  water.  It  does  not  seem  very  exciting  when  you 
tell  of  it,  but  it  really  was  exciting ;  though  it  was  not 
so  exciting  as  to  go  down  to  the  mills,  where  the  Hy- 
draulic plunged  over  that  great  wheel  into  the  Miami. 
A  foot-bridge  crossed  it  that  you  could  jump  up  and 
down  on  and  almost  make  touch  the  water,  and  there 
were  happier  boys,  who  did  not  go  to  school,  fishing 
there  with  men  who  had  never  gone.  Sometimes  the 
schoolboys  ventured  inside  of  the  flour-mill  and  the 
iron-foundry,  but  I  do  not  think  this  was  often  per- 
mitted ;  and,  after  all,  the  great  thing  was  to  rush  over 
to  the  river-bank,  all  the  boys  and  girls  together,  and 
play  with  the  flutter-mills  till  the  bell  rang.  The  mar- 
ket-house was  not  far  off,  and  they  went  there  some- 
times when  it  was  not  market-day,  and  played  among 


58  A   BOY'S   TOWN. 

the  stalls ;  and  once  a  girl  caught  her  hand  on  a  meat- 
hook.  My  boy  had  a  vision  of  her  hanging  from  it ; 
but  this  was  probably  one  of  those  grisly  fancies  that 
were  always  haunting  him,  and  no  fact  at  all.  The 
bridge  was  close  by  the  market-house,  but  for  some 
reason  or  no  reason  the  children  never  played  in  the 
bridge.  Perhaps  the  toll  -  house  man  would  not  let 
them  ;  my  boy  stood  in  dread  of  the  toll-house  man  ; 
he  seemed  to  have  such  a  severe  way  of  taking  the 
money  from  the  teamsters. 

Some  of  the  boys  were  said  to  be  the  beaux  of  some 
of  the  girls.  My  boy  did  not  know  what  that  meant ; 
in  his  own  mind  he  could  not  disentangle  the  idea  of 
bows  from  the  idea  of  arrows ;  but  he  was  in  love  with 
the  girl  who  caught  her  hand  on  the  meat-hook,  and 
secretly  suffered  much  on  account  of  her.  She  had 
black  eyes,  and  her  name  long  seemed  to  him  the  most 
beautiful  name  for  a  girl ;  he  said  it  to  himself  with 
flushes  from  his  ridiculous  little  heart.  While  he  was 
still  a  boy  of  ten  he  heard  that  she  was  married  ;  and 
she  must  have  been  a  great  deal  older  than  he.  In  fact 
he  was  too  small  a  boy  when  he  went  to  the  Academy 
to  remember  how  long  he  went  there,  and  whether  it 
was  months  or  years  ;  but  probably  it  was  not  more  than 
a  year.  He  stopped  going  there  because  the  teacher 
gave  up  the  school  to  become  a  New  Church  minister ; 
and  as  my  boy's  father  and  mother  were  New  Church 
people,  there  must  have  been  some  intimacy  between 
them  and  the  teacher,  which  he  did  not  know  of.  But 
he  only  stood  in  awe,  not  terror,  of  him  ;  and  he  was 
Hvt  surprised  when  he  met  him  many  long  years  after, 
to  find  him  a  man  peculiarly  wise,  gentle,  and  kind. 
Between  the  young  and  the  old  there  is  a  vast  gulf,  sel- 


SCHOOLS   AND   TEACHERS.  59 

dom  if  ever  bridged.  The  old  can  look  backward  over 
it,  but  they  cannot  cross  it,  any  more  than  the  young, 
who  can  see  no  thither  side. 

The  next  school  my  boy  went  to  was  a  district  school, 
as  they  called  a  public  school  in  the  Boy's  Town.  He 
did  not  begin  going  there  without  something  more  than 
his  usual  fear  and  trembling;  for  he  had  heard  free 
schools  and  pay  schools  talked  over  among  the  boys,  and 
sharply  distinguished :  in  a  pay  school  the  teacher  had 
only  such  powers  of  whipping  as  were  given  him  by  the 
parents,  and  they  were  always  strictly  limited  ;  in  a  free 
school  the  teacher  whipped  as  much  and  as  often  as  he 
liked.  For  this  reason  it  was  much  better  to  go  to  a 
pay  school ;  but  you  had  more  fun  at  a  free  school,  be- 
cause there  were  more  fellows ;  you  must  balance  one 
thing  against  another.  The  boy  who  philosophized  the 
matter  in  this  way  was  a  merry,  unlucky  fellow,  who 
fully  tested  the  advantages  and  disadvantages  of  the 
free-school  system.  He  was  one  of  the  best-hearted 
boys  in  the  world,  and  the  kindest  to  little  boys ;  he 
was  always  gay  and  always  in  trouble,  and  forever  laugh- 
ing, when  he  was  not  crying  under  that  cruel  rod. 
Sometimes  he  would  not  cry ;  but  when  he  was  caught 
in  one  of  his  frequent  offences  and  called  up  before  the 
teacher's  desk  in  the  face  of  the  whole  school,  and 
whipped  over  his  thinly  jacketed  shoulders,  he  would 
take  it  without  wincing,  and  go  smiling  to  his  seat,  and 
perhaps  be  called  back  and  whipped  more  for  smiling. 
He  was  a  sort  of  hero  with  the  boys  on  this  account,  but 
he  was  too  kind-hearted  to  be  proud,  and  mingled  with 
the  rest  on  equal  terms.  One  awful  day,  just  before 
school  took  up  in  the  afternoon,  he  and  another  boy 
went  for  a  bucket  of  drinking-water;  it  always  took 


60  A   BOY'S   TOWN. 

two  boys.  They  were  gone  till  long  after  school  began, 
and  when  they  came  back  the  teacher  called  them  up, 
and  waited  for  them  to  arrive  slowly  at  his  desk  while 
he  drew  his  long,  lithe  rod  through  his  left  hand.  They 
had  to  own  that  they  had  done  wrong,  and  they  had  no 
excuse  but  the  one  a  boy  always  has — they  forgot.  He 
said  he  must  teach  them  not  to  forget,  and  their  pun- 
ishment began ;  surely  the  most  hideous  and  depraving 
sight,  except  a  hanging,  that  could  be  offered  to  chil- 
dren's eyes.  One  of  them  howled  and  shrieked,  and 
leaped  and  danced,  catching  his  back,  his  arms,  his  legs, 
as  the  strokes  rained  upon  him,  imploring,  promising, 
and  getting  away  at  last  with  a  wild  effort  to  rub  him- 
self all  over  all  at  once.  When  it  came  the  hero's  turn, 
he  bore  it  without  a  murmur,  and  as  if  his  fortitude 
exasperated  him,  the  teacher  showered  the  blows  more 
swiftly  and  fiercely  upon  him  than  before,  till  a  tear 
or  two  did  steal  down  the  boy's  cheek.  Then  he  was 
sent  to  his  seat,  and  in  a  few  minutes  he  was  happy 
with  a  trap  for  catching  flies  which  he  had  contrived 
in  his  desk. 

No  doubt  they  were  an  unruly  set  of  boys,  and  I  do 
not  suppose  the  teacher  was  a  hard  man,  though  he  led 
the  life  of  an  executioner,  and  seldom  passed  a  day  with- 
out inflicting  pain  that  a  fiend  might  shrink  from  giv- 
ing. My  boy  lived  in  an  anguish  of  fear  lest  somehow 
he  should  come  under  that  rod  of  his  ;  but  he  was  rather 
fond  of  the  teacher,  and  so  were  all  the  boys.  The 
teacher  took  a  real  interest  in  their  studies,  and  if  he 
whipped  them  well,  he  taught  them  well ;  and  at  most 
times  he  was  kind  and  friendly  with  them.  Anyway,  he 
did  not  blister  your  hand  with  a  ruler,  as  some  teachers 
did,  or  make  you  stand  bent  forward  from  the  middle, 


SCHOOLS    AND    TEACHERS.  61 

with  your  head  hanging  down,  so  that  the  blood  all  ran 
into  it.  Under  him  my  boy  made  great  advances  in 
reading  and  writing,  and  he  won  some  distinction  in 
declamation  ;  but  the  old  difficulties  with  the  arithmetic 
remained.  He  failed  to  make  anything  out  of  the  parts 
of  speech  in  his  grammar ;  but  one  afternoon,  while  he 
sat  in  his  stocking  feet,  trying  to  ease  the  chilblains 
which  every  boy  used  to  have  from  his  snow-soaked 
boots,  before  the  days  of  india-rubbers,  he  found  some- 
thing in  the  back  of  his  grammar  which  made  him  for- 
get all  about  the  pain.  This  was  a  part  called  Prosody, 
and  it  told  how  to  make  verses ;  explained  the  feet,  the 
accents,  the  stanzas — everything  that  had  puzzled  him 
in  his  attempts  to  imitate  the  poems  he  had  heard  his 
father  read  aloud.  He  was  amazed ;  he  had  never  im- 
agined that  such  a  science  existed,  and  yet  here  it  was 
printed  out,  with  each  principle  reduced  to  practice. 
He  conceived  of  its  reasons  at  the  first  reading,  so  that 
I  suppose  nature  had  not  dealt  so  charily  with  him  con- 
cerning the  rules  of  prosody  as  the  rules  of  arithmetic ; 
and  he  lost  no  time  in  applying  them  in  a  poem  of  his 
own.  The  afternoon  air  was  heavy  with  the  heat  that 
quivered  visibly  above  the  great  cast-iron  wood  stove  in 
the  centre  of  the  school-room  ;  the  boys  drowsed  in  their 
seats,  or  hummed  sleepily  over  their  lessons ;  the  chil- 
blains gnawed  away  at  the  poet's  feet,  but  heaven  had 
opened  to  him,  and  he  was  rapt  far  from  all  the  world  of 
sense.  The  music  which  he  had  followed  through  those 
poems  his  father  read  was  no  longer  a  mystery ;  he  had  its 
key,  its  secret ;  he  might  hope  to  wield  its  charm,  to  lay 
its  spell  upon  others.  He  wrote  his  poem,  which  was 
probably  a  simple,  unconscious  imitation  of  something 
that  had  pleased  him  in  his  school-reader,  and  carried 


62  A  boy's  town. 

it  proudly  home  with  him.  But  here  he  met  with  that 
sort  of  disappointment  which  more  than  any  other  dis- 
mays and  baffles  authorship  ;  a  difference  in  the  point 
of  view.  His  father  said  the  verses  were  well  made, 
and  he  sympathized  with  him  in  his  delight  at  having 
found  out  the  way  to  make  them,  though  he  was  not 
so  much  astonished  as  the  boy  that  such  a  science  as 
prosody  should  exist.  He  praised  the  child's  work,  and 
no  doubt  smiled  at  it  with  the  mother ;  but  he  said  that 
the  poem  spoke  of  heaven  as  a  place  in  the  sky,  and  he 
wished  him  always  to  realize  that  heaven  was  a  state 
and  not  a  place,  and  that  we  could  have  it  in  this  world 
as  well  as  the  next.  The  boy  promised  that  he  would 
try  to  realize  heaven  as  a  state ;  but  at  the  bottom  of 
his  heart  he  despaired  of  getting  that  idea  into  poetry. 
Everybody  else  who  had  made  poetry  spoke  of  heaven 
as  a  place ;  they  even  called  it  a  land,  and  put  it  in  the 
sky ;  and  he  did  not  see  how  he  was  to  do  otherwise, 
no  matter  what  Swedenborg  said.  He  revered  Sweden- 
borg;  he  had  a  religious  awe  of  the  seer's  lithograph 
portrait  in  a  full-bottom  wig  which  hung  in  the  front- 
room,  but  he  did  not  see  how  even  Swedenborg  could 
have  helped  calling  heaven  a  place  if  he  had  been  mak- 
ing poetry. 

The  next  year,  or  the  next  quarter,  maybe,  there  was 
a  new  teacher;  they  seem  to  have  followed  each  other 
somewhat  as  people  do  in  a  dream  ;  they  were  not  there, 
and  then  they  were  there ;  but,  however  the  new  one 
came,  the  boys  were  some  time  in  getting  used  to  his 
authority.  It  appeared  to  them  that  several  of  his  acts 
were  distinctly  tyrannical,  and  were  encroachments  upon 
rights  of  theirs  which  the  other  teacher,  with  all  his 
severity,  had  respected.     My  boy  was  inspired  by  the 


SCHOOLS   AND   TEACHERS.  63 

common  mood  to  write  a  tragedy  which  had  the  des- 
potic behavior  of  the  new  teacher  for  its  subject,  and 
which  was  intended  to  be  represented  by  the  boys  in 
the  hayloft  of  a  boy  whose  father  had  a  stable  without 
any  horse  in  it.  The  tragedy  was  written  in  the  meas- 
ure of  the  "  Lady  of  the  Lake,"  which  was  the  last  poem 
my  boy  had  heard  his  father  reading  aloud ;  it  was  very 
easy  kind  of  verse.  At  the  same  time,  the  boys  were 
to  be  dressed  as  Roman  conspirators,  and  one  of  them 
was  to  give  the  teacher  a  petition  to  read,  while  an- 
other plunged  a  dagger  into  his  vitals,  and  still  another 
shouted,  "  Strike,  Stephanos,  strike  !"  It  seemed  to  my 
boy  that  he  had  invented  a  situation  which  he  had  lifted 
almost  bodily  out  of  Goldsmith's  history ;  and  he  did 
not  feel  that  his  lines, 

"  Come  one,  come  all !    This  rock  shall  flee 
From  its  firm  base  as  soon  as  we," 

were  too  closely  modelled  upon  Scott's  lines, 

"  Come  one,  come  all !     This  rock  shall  fly 
From  its  firm  base  as  soon  as  I." 

The  tragedy  was  never  acted.  There  may  have  been 
some  trouble  about  the  hayloft ;  for  the  boy  whose 
father  owned  the  stable  was  to  have  got  the  use  of 
it  without  his  father's  knowing  it ;  and  the  poet  found 
that  the  boys  themselves  scarcely  entered  into  the  spirit 
of  his  work.  But  after  that  there  came  a  real  tragedy, 
which  most  of  them  had  part  in  without  realizing  it, 
and  that  was  their  persecution  of  a  teacher  until  he  had 
to  give  up  the  school.  He  must  have  come  next  after 
that  usurper,  but  at  any  rate  the  word  had  been  passed 
round,  even  before  school  took  up  the  first  morning  he 
began,  that  he  was  to  be  resisted  to  the  death.    He  could 


64  A  boy's  town. 

not  have  had  any  notion  of  "what  was  in  the  air,  for  in 
that  opening  speech  to  the  school  which  a  new  teacher 
always  used  to  make,  he  talked  to  the  hoys  in  the  friend- 
liest manner,  and  with  more  sense  and  reason  than  they 
could  feel,  though  I  hope  they  felt  some  secret  shame 
for  the  way  they  meant  to  behave.  He  took  up  some 
old,  dry  rods,  which  he  had  lying  on  his  desk,  and  which 
he  said  he  had  found  in  it,  and  he  told  them  he  hoped 
never  to  use  such  a  thing  as  a  rod  in  that  school,  and 
never  to  strike  any  boy  a  blow.  He  broke  the  rods  into 
small  pieces  and  put  them  into  the  stove,  and  called  the 
school  to  order  for  the  studies  before  it.  But  the  school 
never  came  to  order,  either  then  or  afterwards.  As  soon 
as  the  teacher  took  his  seat,  the  whispering  and  giggling, 
the  scuffling  and  pushing  began.  The  boys  passed  notes 
to  the  girls  and  held  up  their  slates  with  things  written 
on  them  to  make  the  girls  laugh  ;  and  they  threw  chewed- 
paper  balls  at  one  another.  They  asked  to  go  out,  and 
they  stayed  out  as  long  as  they  pleased,  and  came  back 
with  an  easy  air,  as  if  they  had  done  nothing.  They 
would  not  study ;  they  did  not  care  how  much  they 
missed  in  the  class,  and  they  laughed  when  they  had  to 
go  to  the  foot.  They  made  faces  at  the  teacher  and 
mocked  him  when  his  back  was  turned  ;  they  even 
threw  paper  wads  at  him. 

It  went  on  day  after  day  till  the  school  became  a  ba- 
bel. The  teacher  tried  reasoning,  and  such  mild  pun- 
ishment as  standing  up  in  the  middle  of  the  floor,  and 
keeping  in  after  school.  One  big  boy  whom  he  stood 
up  winked  at  the  girls  and  made  everybody  titter ;  an- 
other whom  he  bade  stay  after  school  grabbed  his  hat 
and  ran  out  of  t'he  room.  The  fellows  played  hookey 
as  much  as  they  wanted  to,  and  did  not  give  any  ex* 


SCHOOLS   AND   TEACHERS.  65 

cuse  for  being  late,  or  for  not  coming  at  all.  At  last, 
when  the  teacher  was  driven  desperate,  and  got  in  a 
rod  (which  he  said  he  was  ashamed  to  use,  but  they  left 
him  no  hope  of  ruling  them  by  reason),  the  big  boys 
fought  him,  and  struck  bach  when  he  began  to  whip 
them.  This  gentle  soul  had  not  one  friend  among  all 
those  little  savages,  whom  he  had  given  no  cause  to  hate, 
but  only  cause  to  love  him.  None  of  them  could  have 
told  why  they  used  him  so  ill,  for  nobody  knew ;  only, 
the  word  had  gone  out  that  you  were  not  to  mind  him, 
but  to  mock  him  and  fight  him  ;  nobody  knew  where 
the  word  first  came  from. 

Not  even  my  boy,  I  grieve  to  say,  was  the  poor  man's 
friend,  though  he  too  had  received  only  kindness  from 
him.  One  day,  when  the  teacher  had  set  him  his  copy, 
and  found  him  doing  it  badly  as  he  came  by,  he  gave 
him  a  slight  tap  on  his  head  with  his  penknife,  and  ad- 
dressed him  some  half-joking  reproof.  This  fired  my 
boy's  wicked  little  heart  with  furious  resentment ;  he 
gathered  up  his  books  after  school,  and  took  them  home  ; 
a  good  many  other  boys  had  done  it,  and  the  school  was 
dwindling.  He  was  sent  back  with  his  books  the  next 
morning,  and  many  other  parents  behaved  as  wisely  as 
his.  One  of  the  leading  men  in  the  town,  whose  mere 
presence  in  the  schoolroom  sent  a  thrill  of  awe  through 
the  fellows,  brought  his  son  in  after  such  an  escapade, 
and  told  the  teacher  that  he  had  just  given  him  a  sound 
thrashing,  and  he  hoped  the  teacher  would  give  him  an- 
other. But  the  teacher  took  the  hand  of  the  snivelling 
wretch,  and  called  him  affectionately  by  name,  and  said 
they  would  try  to  get  along  without  that,  and  sent  him 
to  his  seat  forgiven.  It  ought  to  have  touched  a  heart 
of  stone,  but  in  that  barbarous  republic  of  boys  there 


66  A  boy's  town. 

was  no  gratitude.  Sometimes  they  barred  the  teacher 
out  by  nailing  the  doors  and  windows ;  and  at  last  he 
gave  up  the  school. 

But  even  then  his  persecution  did  not  end.  The  word 
went  out  that  you  were  not  to  speak  to  him  if  you  met 
him  ;  and  if  he  spoke  to  you,  you  were  not  to  say  any- 
thing back.  One  day  he  came  up  to  my  boy  where  he 
sat  fishing  for  crawfish  in  the  Hydraulic,  with  his  bare 
legs  dangling  over  the  edge  of  a  culvert,  and,  unawed 
by  this  august  figure,  asked  him  pleasantly  what  luck 
he  had.  The  boy  made  no  sign  of  seeing  or  hearing 
him,  and  he  ignored  some  other  kindly  advances.  I 
hope  the  teacher  thought  it  merely  his  shyness.  The 
boy  went  home  and  told,  gleefully,  how  he  had  refused 
to  speak  to  Old  Manton ;  but  here  he  met  his  reward. 
He  was  made  to  feel  how  basely  rude  he  had  been,  and 
to  tingle  with  a  wholesome  shame.  There  was  some 
talk  of  sending  him  to  the  teacher,  to  ask  his  forgive- 
ness ;  but  this  was  given  up  for  fear  of  inflicting  pain 
where  possibly  none  had  been  felt.  I  wish  now  the 
boy  could  have  gone  to  him,  for  perhaps  the  teacher  is 
no  longer  living. 


VII.    1 

MANNERS   AND   CUSTOMS. 

I  sometimes  wonder  how  much  these  have  changed 
since  my  boy's  time.  Of  course  they  differ  somewhat 
from  generation  to  generation,  and  from  East  to  West 
and  North  to  South,  but  not  so  much,  I  believe,  as  grown 
people  are  apt  to  think.  Everywhere  and  always  the 
world  of  boys  is  outside  of  the  laws  that  govern  grown- 
up communities,  and  it  has  its  unwritten  usages,  which 
s>re  handed  down  from  old  to  young,  and  perpetuated 
i>n  the  same  level  of  years,  and  are  lived  into  and  lived 
t?ut  of,  but  are  binding,  through  all  personal  vicissi- 
tudes, upon  the  great  body  of  boys  between  six  and 
twelve  years  old.  No  boy  can  violate  them  without 
losing  his  standing  among  the  other  boys,  and  he  can- 
bot  enter  into  their  world  without  coming  under  them. 
He  must  do  this,  and  must  not  do  that ;  he  obeys,  but 
he  does  not  know  why,  any  more  than  the  far-off  sav- 
ages from  whom  his  customs  seem  mostly  to  have  come. 
His  world  is  all  in  and  through  the  world  of  men  and 
women,  but  no  man  or  woman  can  get  into  it  any  more 
than  if  it  were  a  world  of  invisible  beings.  It  has  its 
own  ideals  and  superstitions,  and  these  are  often  of  a 
ferocity,  a  depravity,  scarcely  credible  in  after-life.  It  is 
a  great  pity  that  fathers  and  mothers  cannot  penetrate 
that  world ;  but  they  cannot,  and  it  is  only  by  accident 
that  they  can  catch  some  glimpse  of  what  goes  on  in  it. 


68  A  BOY'S   TOWN. 

No  doubt  it  will  be  civilized  in  time,  but  it  will  be  very 
slowly ;  and  in  the  meanwhile  it  is  only  in  some  of  its 
milder  manners  and  customs  that  the  boy's  world  can 
be  studied. 

The  first  great  law  was  that,  whatever  happened  to 
you  through  another  boy,  whatever  hurt  or  harm  he  did 
you,  you  were  to  right  yourself  upon  his  person  if  you 
could ;  but  if  he  was  too  big,  and  you  could  not  hope 
to  revenge  yourself,  then  you  were  to  bear  the  wrong, 
not  only  for  that  time,  but  for  as  many  times  as  he  chose 
to  inflict  it.  To  tell  the  teacher  or  your  mother,  or  to 
betray  your  tormentor  to  any  one  outside  of  the  boys' 
world,  was  to  prove  yourself  a  cry-baby,  without  honoi 
or  self-respect,  and  unfit  to  go  with  the  other  fellows. 
They  would  have  the  right  to  mock  you,  to  point  at 
you,  and  call  "  E-e-e,  e-e-e,  e-e-e  !"  at  you,  till  you  fought 
them.  After  that,  whether  you  whipped  them  or  not 
there  began  to  be  some  feeling  in  your  favor  again,  anty 
they  had  to  stop. 

Every  boy  who  came  to  town  from  somewhere  else, 
or  who  moved  into  a  new  neighborhood,  had  to  fight 
the  old  residents.  There  was  no  reason  for  this,  ex- 
cept that  he  was  a  stranger,  and  there  appeared  to  be 
no  other  means  of  making  his  acquaintance.  If  he  wa:s 
generally  whipped  he  became  subject  to  the  local  tribe, 
as  the  Delawares  were  to  the  Iroquois  in  the  last  cent- 
ury ;  if  he  whipped  the  other  boys,  then  they  adopted 
him  into  their  tribe,  and  he  became  a  leader  among 
them.  When  you  moved  away  from  a  neighborhood 
you  did  not  lose  all  your  rights  in  it ;  you  did  not  have 
to  fight  when  you  went  back  to  see  the  boys,  or  any. 
thing ;  but  if  one  of  them  met  you  in  your  new  pre 
cincts  you  might  have  to  try  conclusions  with  him; 


MANNERS   AND   CUSTOMS.  69 

and  perhaps,  if  he  was  a  hoy  who  had  been  in  the  habit 
of  whipping  you,  you  were  quite  ready  to  do  so.  When 
my  boy's  family  left  the  Smith  house,  one  of  the  boys 
from  that  neighborhood  came  up  to  see  him  at  the  Fal- 
coner house,  and  tried  to  carry  things  with  a  high  hand, 
as  he  had  always  done.  Then  my  boy  fought  him, 
quite  as  if  he  were  not  a  Delaware  and  the  other  boy 
not  an  Iroquois,  with  sovereign  rights  over  him.  My 
boy  was  beaten,  but  the  difference  was  that,  if  he  had 
not  been  on  new  ground,  he  would  have  been  beaten 
without  daring  to  fight.  His  mother  witnessed  the 
combat,  and  came  out  and  shamed  him  for  his  behav- 
ior, and  had  in  the  other  boy,  and  made  them  friends 
over  some  sugar-cakes.  But  after  that  the  boys  of  the 
Smith  neighborhood  understood  that  my  boy  would  not 
be  whipped  without  fighting.  The  home  instruction 
was  all  against  fighting;  my  boy  was  taught  that  it 
was  not  only  wicked,  but  foolish ;  that  if  it  was  wrong 
to  strike,  it  was  just  as  wrong  to  strike  back  ;  that  two 
wrongs  never  made  a  right,  and  so  on.  But  all  this 
was  not  of  the  least  effect  with  a  hot  temper  amid  the 
trials  and  perplexities  of  life  in  the  Boy's  Town. 

There  were  some  boys  of  such  standing  as  bullies  and 
such  wide  fame  that  they  could  range  all  neighborhoods 
of  the  town  not  only  without  fear  of  being  molested,  or 
made  to  pass  under  the  local  yoke  anywhere,  but  with 
such  plenary  powers  of  intimidation  that  the  other 
boys  submitted  to  them  without  question.  My  boy  had 
always  heard  of  one  of  these  bullies,  whose  very  name, 
Buz  Simpson,  carried  terror  with  it ;  but  he  had  never 
seen  him,  because  he  lived  in  the  unknown  region  bor- 
dering on  the  river  south  of  the  Thomas  house.  One  day 
he  suddenly  appeared,  when  my  boy  was  playing  mar- 


10  A   BOY'S   TOWN. 

bles  with  some  other  fellows  in  front  of  the  Falconer 
house,  attended  by  two  or  three  other  boys  from  below 
the  Sycamore  Grove.  He  was  small  and  insignificant, 
but  such  was  the  fear  his  name  inspired  that  my  boy 
and  his  friends  cowered  before  him,  though  some  of 
them  were  no  mean  fighters  themselves.  They  seemed 
to  know  by  instinct  that  this  was  Buz  Simpson,  and 
they  stood  patiently  by  while  he  kicked  their  marbles 
out  of  the  ring  and  broke  up  their  game,  and,  aftex* 
staying  awhile  to  cover  them  with  ignominy  and  in- 
sult, passed  on  with  his  retainers  to  other  fields  of  con' 
quest.  If  it  had  been  death  to  resist  him,  they  couhf 
not  have  dreamed  less  of  doing  so ;  and  though  thii? 
outrage  took  place  under  my  boy's  own  windows,  ami 
a  single  word  would  have  brought  efficient  aid  (for  thy 
mere  sight  of  any  boy's  mother  could  put  to  flight  v 
whole  army  of  other  boys),  he  never  dreamed  of  call 
ing  for  help. 

That  would  have  been  a  weakness  which  would  not  onl . 
have  marked  him  forever  as  a  cry-baby,  but  an  indecoruiii. 
too  gross  for  words.  It  would  have  been  as  if,  whew, 
once  the  boys  were  playing  trip  at  school,  and  a  big  boy 
tripped  him,  and  he  lay  quivering  and  panting  on  tha 
ground,  be  had  got  up  as  soon  as  he  could  catch  his 
breath  and  gone  in  and  told  the  teacher  ;  or  as  if,  wheu 
the  fellows  were  playing  soak-about,  and  he  got  hit  i:a 
the  pit  of  the  stomach  with  a  hard  ball,  he  had  com  . 
plained  of  the  fellow  who  threw  it.  There  were  soms 
things  so  base  that  a  boy  could  not  do  them ;  and  what, 
happened  out  of  doors,  and  strictly  within  the  boy'& 
world,  had  to  be  kept  sacredly  secret  among  the  boys 
For  instance,  if  you  had  been  beguiled,  as  a  little  boy, 
into  being  the  last  in  the  game  of  snap-the-whip,  and  tha 


MANNEES    AND   CUSTOMS.  71 

snap  sent  you  rolling  head  over  heels  on  the  hard  ground, 
and  skinned  your  nose  and  tore  your  trousers,  you  could 
cry  from  the  pain  without  disgrace,  and  some  of  the  fel- 
'ows  would  come  up  and  try  to  comfort  you ;  but  you 
were  bound  in  honor  not  to  appeal  to  the  teacher,  and 
f  ou  were  expected  to  use  every  device  to  get  the  blood 
off  you  before  you  went  in,  and  to  hide  the  tear  in  your 
irousers.  Of  course,  the  tear  and  the  blood  could  not 
he  kept  from  the  anxious  eyes  at  home,  but  even  there 
you  were  expected  not  to  say  just  what  boys  did  it. 

They  were  by  no  means  the  worst  boys  who  did  such 
things,  but  only  the  most  thoughtless.  Still,  there  was 
%  public  opinion  in  the  Boy's  Town  which  ruled  out 
t;ertain  tricks,  and  gave  the  boys  who  played  them  the 
name  of  being  "  mean."  One  of  these  was  boring  a 
Ivole  in  the  edge  of  your  school-desk  to  meet  a  shaft 
Hunk  from  the  top,  which  you  filled  with  slate-pencil 
i lust.  Then,  if  you  were  that  kind  of  boy,  you  got 
r'ome  little  chap  to  put  his  eye  close  to  the  shaft,  with 
the  hope  of  seeing  Niagara  Falls,  and  set  your  lips  to 
the  hole  in  the  edge,  and  blew  his  eye  full  of  pencil- 
iust.  This  was  mean  ;  and  it  was  also  mean  to  get  some 
insuspecting  child  to  close  the  end  of  an  elderwood 
I'ube  with  his  thumb,  and  look  hard  at  you,  while  you 
showed  him  Germany.  You  did  this  by  pulling  a  string 
below  the  tube,  and  running  a  needle  into  his  thumb. 
My  boy  discovered  Germany  in  this  way  long  before  he 
had  any  geographical  or  political  conception  of  it. 

I  do  not  know  why,  if  these  abominable  cruelties 
ti/ere  thought  mean,  it  was  held  lawful  to  cover  a  stone 
t?ith  dust  and  get  a  boy,  not  in  the  secret,  to  kick  the 
(>ile  over  with  his  bare  foot.  It  was  perfectly  good 
form,  also,  to  get  a  boy,  if  you  could,  to  shut  his  eyes, 


72  A  boy's  town. 

and  then  lead  him  into  a  mud-puddle  or  a  thicket  of 
briers  or  nettles,  or  to  fool  him  in  any  heartless  way, 
such  as  promising  to  pump  easy  when  he  put  his  mouth 
to  the  pump-spout,  and  then  coming  down  on  the  pump^ 
handle  with  a  rush  that  flooded  him  with  water  and  sent 
him  off  blowing  the  tide  from  his  nostrils  like  a  whale. 
Perhaps  these  things  were  permitted  because  the  sight 
of  the  victim's  suffering  was  so  funny.  Half  the  pleas- 
ure in  fighting  wasps  or  bumble-bees  was  in  killing 
them  and  destroying  their  nests ;  the  other  half  was  in 
seeing  the  fellows  get  stung.  If  you  could  fool  a  fel- 
low into  a  mass-meeting  of  bumble-bees,  and  see  him 
lead  them  off  in  a  steeple-chase,  it  was  right  and  fair 
to  do  so.  But  there  were  other  cases  in  which  deceit 
was  not  allowable.  For  instance,  if  you  appeared  on 
the  playground  with  an  apple,  and  all  the  boys  came 
whooping  round,  "  You  know  me,  Jimmy  !"  "  You 
know  your  uncle  !"  "  You  know  your  grandfather !" 
and  you  began  to  sell  out  bites  at  three  pins  for  a  lady- 
bite  and  six  pins  for  a  hog-bite,  and  a  boy  bought  a  lady- 
bite  and  then  took  a  hog-bite,  he  was  held  in  contempt, 
and  could  by  no  means  pass  it  off  for  a  good  joke  on 
you ;  it  was  considered  mean. 

In  the  Boy's  Town  there  was  almost  as  much  stone- 
throwing  as  there  was  in  Florence  in  the  good  old  times. 
There  was  a  great  abundance  of  the  finest  kind  of  peb- 
bles, from  the  size  of  a  robin's  egg  upward,  smooth  and 
shapely,  which  the  boys  called  rocks.  They  were  always 
stoning  something,  birds,  or  dogs,  or  mere  inanimate 
marks,  but  most  of  the  time  they  were  stoning  one  an- 
other. They  came  out  of  their  houses,  or  front-yards, 
and  began  to  throw  stones,  when  they  were  on  perfectly 
good  terms,  and  they  usually  threw  stones  in  parting 


MANNERS   AND    CUSTOMS.  73 

for  the  day.  They  stoned  a  boy  who  left  a  group 
singly,  and  it  was  lawful  for  him  to  throw  stones  back 
at  the  rest,  if  the  whim  took  him,  when  he  got  a  little 
way  off.  With  all  this  stone-throwing,  very  little  harm 
was  done,  though  now  and  then  a  stone  took  a  boy  on 
the  skull,  and  raised  a  lump  of  its  own  size.  Then  the 
other  boys  knew,  by  the  roar  of  rage  and  pain  he  set 
up,  that  he  had  been  hit,  and  ran  home  and  left  him  to 
his  fate. 

Their  fights  were  mostly  informal  scuffles,  on  and  off 
in  a  flash,  and  conducted  with  none  of  the  ceremony 
which  I  have  read  of  concerning  the  fights  of  English 
boys.  It  was  believed  that  some  of  the  fellows  knew 
how  to  box,  and  all  the  fellows  intended  to  learn,  but 
nobody  ever  did.  The  fights  sprang  usually  out  of 
some  trouble  of  the  moment ;  but  at  times  they  were 
arranged  to  settle  some  question  of  moral  or  physical 
superiority.  Then  one  boy  put  a  chip  on  his  shoulder 
and  dared  the  other  to  knock  it  off.  It  took  a  great 
while  to  bring  the  champions  to  blows,  and  I  have 
known  the  mere  preparatory  insults  of  a  fight  of  this 
kind  to  wear  out  the  spirit  of  the  combatants  and  the 
patience  of  the  spectators,  so  that  not  a  blow  was  struck, 
finally,  and  the  whole  affair  fell  through. 

Though  they  were  so  quarrelsome  among  themselves, 
the  boys  that  my  boy  went  with  never  molested  girls. 
They  mostly  ignored  them ;  but  they  would  have 
scorned  to  hurt  a  girl  almost  as  much  as  they  would 
have  scorned  to  play  with  one.  Of  course  while  they 
were  very  little  they  played  with  girls ;  and  after  they 
began  to  be  big  boys,  eleven  or  twelve  years  old,  they 
began  to  pay  girls  some  attention ;  but  for  the  rest 
they  simply  left  them  out  of  the  question,  except  at 


74  a  boy's  town. 

parties,  when  the  games  obliged  them  to  take  some 
notice  of  the  girls.  Even  then,  however,  it  was  not 
good  form  for  a  boy  to  be  greatly  interested  in  them  ; 
and  he  had  to  conceal  any  little  fancy  he  had  about 
this  girl  or  that  unless  he  wanted  to  be  considered 
soft  by  the  other  fellows.  When  they  were  having 
fun  they  did  not  want  to  have  any  girls  around ;  but 
in  the  back-yard  a  boy  might  play  teeter  or  seesaw, 
or  some  such  thing,  with  his  sisters  and  their  friends, 
without  necessarily  losing  caste,  though  such  things  were 
not  encouraged.  On  the  other  hand,  a  boy  was  bound 
to  defend  them  against  anything  that  he  thought  slight- 
ing or  insulting ;  and  you  did  not  have  to  verify  the 
fact  that  anything  had  been  said  or  done ;  you  merely 
had  to  hear  that  it  had.  It  once  fell  to  my  boy  to 
avenge  such  a  reported  wrong  from  a  boy  who  had  not 
many  friends  in  school,  a  timid  creature  whom  the  mere 
accusation  frightened  half  out  of  his  wits,  and  who 
wildly  protested  his  innocence.  He  ran,  and  my  boy 
followed  with  the  other  boys  after  him,  till  they 
overtook  the  culprit  and  brought  him  to  bay  against  a 
high  board  fence  ;  and  there  my  boy  struck  him  in 
his  imploring  face.  He  tried  to  feel  like  a  righteous 
champion,  but  he  felt  like  a  brutal  ruffian.  He  long 
had  the  sight  of  that  terrified,  weeping  face,  and  with 
shame  and  sickness  of  heart  he  cowered  before  it.  If 
was  pretty  nearly  the  last  of  his  fighting ;  and  though 
he  came  off  victor,  he  felt  that  he  would  rather  be  beat- 
en himself  than  do  another  such  act  of  justice.  In 
fact,  it  seems  best  to  be  very  careful  how  we  try  to  do 
justice  in  this  world,  and  mostly  to  leave  retribution 
of  all  kinds  to  God,  who  really  knows  about  things; 
and  content  ourselves  as  much  as  possible  with  mercy, 
whose  mistakes  are  not  so  irreparable. 


MANNEKS   AND   CUSTOMS.  15 

The  boys  had  very  little  to  do  with  the  inside  of  one 
another's  houses.  They  would  follow  a  boy  to  his 
door,  and  wait  for  him  to  come  out ;  and  they  would 
sometimes  get  him  to  go  in  and  ask  his  mother  for 
crullers  or  sugar -cakes;  when  they  came  to  see  him 
they  never  went  indoors  for  him,  but  stood  on  the 
sidewalk  and  called  him  with  a  peculiar  cry,  something 
like  "  E-oo-we,  e-oo-we  !"  and  threw  stones  at  trees,  or 
anything,  till  he  came  out.  If  he  did  not  come,  after  a 
reasonable  time,  they  knew  he  was  not  there,  or  that  his 
mother  would  not  let  him  come.  A  fellow  was  kept  in 
that  way,  now  and  then.  If  a  fellow's  mother  came  to 
the  door  the  boys  always  ran. 

The  mother  represented  the  family  sovereignty ;  the 
father  was  seldom  seen,  and  he  counted  for  little  or 
nothing  among  the  outside  boys.  It  was  the  mother 
who  could  say  whether  a  boy  might  go  fishing  or  in  swim- 
ming, and  she  was  held  a  good  mother  or  not  according 
as  she  habitually  said  yes  or  no.  There  was  no  other 
standard  of  goodness  for  mothers  in  the  boy's  world, 
and  could  be  none ;  and  a  bad  mother  might  be  out- 
witted by  any  device  that  the  other  boys  could  suggest 
to  her  boy.  Such  a  boy  was  always  willing  to  listen  to 
any  suggestion,  and  no  boy  took  it  hard  if  the  other 
fellows  made  fun  when  their  plan  got  him  into  trouble 
at  home.  If  a  boy  came  out  after  some  such  experi- 
ence with  his  face  wet,  and  his  eyes  red,  and  his  lips 
swollen,  of  course  you  had  to  laugh ;  he  expected  it, 
and  you  expected  him  to  stone  you  for  laughing. 

When  a  boy's  mother  had  company,  he  went  and 
hid  till  the  guests  were  gone,  or  only  came  out  of  con- 
cealment to  get  some  sort  of  shy  lunch.  If  the  other 
fellows'  mothers  were  there,  he  might  be  a  little  bolder, 


76  a  boy's  town. 

and  bring  out  cake  from  the  second  table.  But  he  had 
to  be  pretty  careful  how  he  conformed  to  any  of  the 
usages  of  grown-up  society.  A  fellow  who  brushed 
his  hair,  and  put  on  shoes,  and  came  into  the  parlor 
when  there  was  company,  was  not  well  seen  among  the 
fellows ;  he  was  regarded  in  some  degree  as  a  girl-boy ; 
a  boy  who  wished  to  stand  well  with  other  boys  kept 
in  the  wood-shed,  and  only  went  in  as  far  as  the  kitchen 
to  get  things  for  his  guests  in  the  back-yard.  Yet  there 
were  mothers  who  would  make  a  boy  put  on  a  collar 
when  they  had  company,  and  disgrace  him  before  the 
world  by  making  him  stay  round  and  help ;  they  acted 
as  if  they  had  no  sense  and  no  pity ;  but  such  mothers 
were  rare. 

Most  mothers  yielded  to  public  opinion  and  let  their 
boys  leave  the  house,  and  wear  just  what  they  always 
wore.  I  have  told  how  little  they  wore  in  summer.  Of 
course  in  winter  they  had  to  put  on  more  things.  In 
those  days  knickerbockers  were  unknown,  and  if  a  boy 
had  appeared  in  short  pants  and  long  stockings  he  would 
have  been  thought  dressed  like  a  circus-actor.  Boys 
wore  long  pantaloons,  like  men,  as  soon  as  they  put  off 
skirts,  and  they  wore  jackets  or  roundabouts  such  as 
the  English  boys  still  wear  at  Eton.  When  the  cold 
weather  came  they  had  to  put  on  shoes  and  stockings, 
or  rather  long-legged  boots,  such  as  are  seen  now  only 
among  lumbermen  and  teamsters  in  the  country.  Most 
of  the  fellows  had  stoga  boots,  as  heavy  as  iron  and  as 
hard ;  they  were  splendid  to  skate  in,  they  kept  your 
ankles  so  stiff.  Sometimes  they  greased  them  to  keep 
the  water  out ;  but  they  never  blacked  them  except  on 
Sunday,  and  before  Saturday  they  were  as  red  as  a  rusty 
stove-pipe.     At  night  they  were  always  so  wet  that  you 


MANNERS   AND    CUSTOMS.  77 

could  not  get  them  off  without  a  boot-jack,  and  you 
could  hardly  do  it  anyway;  sometimes  you  got  your 
brother  to  help  you  off  with  them,  and  then  he  pulled 
you  all  round  the  room.  In  the  morning  they  were  dry, 
but  just  as  hard  as  stone,  and  you  had  to  soap  the  heel 
of  your  woollen  sock  (which  your  grandmother  had 
knitted  for  you,  or  maybe  some  of  your  aunts)  before 
you  could  get  your  foot  in,  and  sometimes  the  ears  of 
the  boot  that  you  pulled  it  on  by  would  give  way,  and 
you  would  have  to  stamp  your  foot  in  and  kick  the  toe 
against  the  mop-board.  Then  you  gasped  and  limped 
round,  with  your  feet  like  fire,  till  you  could  get  out  and 
limber  your  boots  up  in  some  water  somewhere.  About 
noon  your  chilblains  began. 

My  boy  had  his  secret  longing  to  be  a  dandy,  and 
once  he  was  so  taken  with  a  little  silk  hat  at  the  hat- 
store  that  he  gave  his  father  no  peace  till  he  got  it  for 
him.  But  the  very  first  time  he  wore  it  the  boys  made 
fun  of  it,  and  that  was  enough.  After  that  he  wore  it 
several  times  with  streaming  tears ;  and  then  he  was 
allowed  to  lay  it  aside,  and  compromise  on  an  unstylish 
cap  of  velvet,  which  he  had  despised  before.  I  do  not 
know  why  a  velvet  cap  was  despised,  but  it  was ;  a  cap 
with  a  tassel  was  babyish.  The  most  desired  kind  of 
cap  was  a  flat  one  of  blue  broadcloth,  with  a  patent- 
leather  peak,  and  a  removable  cover  of  oil-cloth,  silk  if 
you  were  rich,  cotton  if  you  were  poor ;  when  you  had 
pulled  the  top  of  such  a  cap  over  on  one  side,  you  were 
dressed  for  conquest,  especially  if  you  wore  your  hair 
long.  My  boy  had  such  a  cap,  with  a  silk  oil-cloth 
cover,  but  his  splendor  was  marred  by  his  short  hair. 

At  one  time  boots  with  long,  sharp-pointed  toes  were 
the  fashion,  and  he  so  ardently  desired  a  pair  of  these 


IS  A  BOY'S  TOWN. 

that  fate  granted  his  prayer,  but  in  the  ironical  spirit 
■which  fate  usually  shows  when  granting  a  person's  pray- 
ers. These  boots  were  of  calf-skin,  and  they  had  red 
leather  tops,  which  you  could  show  by  letting  your 
pantaloon-legs  carelessly  catch  on  the  ears ;  but  the 
smallest  pair  in  town  was  several  sizes  too  large  for  my 
boy.  The  other  boys  were  not  slow  to  discover  the  fact, 
and  his  martyrdom  with  these  boots  began  at  once. 
But  he  was  not  allowed  to  give  them  up  as  he  did  the 
silk  hat ;  he  had  to  wear  them  out.  However,  it  did 
not  take  long  to  wear  out  a  pair  of  boots  in  the  Boy's 
Town.  A  few  weeks'  scuffling  over  the  gravelly  ground, 
or  a  single  day's  steady  sliding  made  them  the  subjects 
for  half-soling,  and  then  it  was  a  question  of  only  a 
very  little  time. 

A  good  many  of  the  boys,  though,  wore  their  boots 
long  after  they  were  worn  out,  and  so  they  did  with  the 
rest  of  their  clothes.  I  have  tried  to  give  some  notion 
of  the  general  distribution  of  comfort  which  was  never 
riches  in  the  Boy's  Town ;  but  I  am  afraid  that  I  could 
not  paint  the  simplicity  of  things  there  truly  without 
being  misunderstood  in  these  days  of  great  splendor 
and  great  squalor.  Everybody  had  enough,  but  nobody 
had  too  much  ;  the  richest  man  in  town  might  be  worth 
twenty  thousand  dollars.  There  were  distinctions  among 
the  grown  people,  and  no  doubt  there  were  the  social 
cruelties  which  are  the  modern  expression  of  the  savage 
spirit  otherwise  repressed  by  civilization ;  but  these 
were  unknown  among  the  boys.  Savages  they  were, 
but  not  that  kind  of  savages.  They  valued  a  boy  for 
his  character  and  prowess,  and  it  did  not  matter  in  the 
least  that  he  was  ragged  and  dirty.  Their  mothers 
might  not  allow  him  the  run  of  their  kitchens  quite  so 


MANNERS   AND   CUSTOMS.  19 

freely  as  some  other  boys,  but  the  boys  went  with  him 
just  the  same,  and  they  never  noticed  how  little  he  was 
washed  and  dressed.  The  best  of  them  had  not  an 
overcoat ;  and  underclothing  was  unknown  among  them. 
When  a  boy  had  buttoned  up  his  roundabout,  and  put 
on  his  mittens,  and  tied  his  comforter  round  his  neck 
find  over  his  ears,  he  was  warmly  dressed. 


VIII. 

PLAYS   AND   PASTIMES. 

About  the  time  fate  cursed  him  with  a  granted  prayer 
in  those  boots,  my  boy  was  deep  in  the  reading  of  a 
book  about  Grecian  mythology  which  he  found  perpet- 
ually fascinating ;  he  read  it  over  and  over  without  ever 
thinking  of  stopping  merely  because  he  had  already  been 
through  it  twenty  or  thirty  times.  It  had  pictures  of 
all  the  gods  and  goddesses,  demigods  and  heroes ;  and 
he  tried  to  make  poems  upon  their  various  characters 
and  exploits.  But  Apollo  was  his  favorite,  and  I  believe 
it  was  with  some  hope  of  employing  them  in  a  persona- 
tion of  the  god  that  he  coveted  those  red-topped  sharp- 
toed  calf-skin  boots.  He  had  a  notion  that  if  he  could 
get  up  a  chariot  by  sawing  down  the  sides  of  a  store- 
box  for  the  body,  and  borrowing  the  hind-wheels  of  the 
baby's  willow  wagon,  and  then,  drawn  by  the  family  dog 
Tip  at  a  mad  gallop,  come  suddenly  whirling  round  the 
corner  of  the  school  -  house,  wearing  spangled  circus- 
tights  and  bearing  Apollo's  bow  and  shaft,  while  a  silk- 
en scarf  which  he  had  seen  in  a  bureau-drawer  at  home 
blew  gallantly  out  behind  him,  it  would  have  a  fine  ef- 
fect with  the  boys.  Some  of  the  fellows  wished  to  be 
highway  robbers  and  outlaws ;  one  who  intended  to  be 
a  pirate  afterwards  got  so  far  in  a  maritime  career  as  to 
invent  a  steam-engine  governor  now  in  use  on  the  sea- 
going steamers ;  my  boy  was  content  to  be  simply  a 


PLATS   AND   PASTIMES.  81 

god,  the  god  of  poetry  and  sunshine.  He  never  real- 
ized his  modest  ambition,  but  then  boys  never  realize 
anything ;  though  they  have  lots  of  fun  failing. 

In  the  Boy's  Town  they  had  regular  games  and  plays, 
which  came  and  went  in  a  stated  order.  The  first  thing 
in  the  spring  as  soon  as  the  frost  began  to  come  out  of 
the  ground,  they  had  marbles  which  they  played  till  the 
weather  began  to  be  pleasant  for  the  game,  and  then 
l;hey  left  it  off.  There  were  some  mean-spirited  fellows 
ivho  played  for  fun,  but  any  boy  who  was  anything 
'played  for  keeps :  that  is,  keeping  all  the  marbles  he 
ivon.  As  my  boy  was  skilful  at  marbles,  he  was  able 
to  start  out  in  the  morning  with  his  toy,  or  the  marble 
he  shot  with,  and  a  commy,  or  a  brown  marble  of  the 
(owest  value,  and  come  home  at  night  with  a  pocket- 
ful of  white -alleys  and  blood -alleys,  striped  plasters 
'md  bull's-eyes,  and  crystals,  clear  and  clouded.  His 
gambling  was  not  approved  of  at  home,  but  it  was  al- 
'owed  him  because  of  the  hardness  of  his  heart,  I  sup- 
pose, and  because  it  was  not  thought  well  to  keep  him 
up  too  strictly ;  and  I  suspect  it  would  have  been  use- 
less to  forbid  his  playing  for  keeps,  though  he  came  to 
aave  a  bad  conscience  about  it  before  he  gave  it  up. 
There  were  three  kinds  of  games  at  marbles  which  the 
boys  played :  one  with  a  long  ring  marked  out  on  the 
ground,  and  a  base  some  distance  off,  which  you  began 
to  shoot  from ;  another  with  a  round  ring,  whose  line 
formed  the  base ;  and  another  with  holes,  three  or  five, 
liollowed  in  the  earth  at  equal  distances  from  each  oth- 
5r,  which  was  called  knucks.  You  could  play  for  keeps 
in  all  these  games ;  and  in  knucks,  if  you  won,  you  had 
I  shot  or  shots  at  the  knuckles  of  the  fellow  who  lost, 
md  who  was  obliged  to  hold  them  down  for  you  to 


82  A   BOY'S   TOWN. 

shoot  at.  Fellows  who  were  mean  would  twitch  their 
knuckles  away  when  they  saw  your  toy  coming,  and 
run  ;  but  most  of  them  took  their  punishment  with  the 
savage  pluck  of  so  many  little  Sioux.  As  the  game 
began  in  the  raw  cold  of  the  earliest  spring,  every  boy 
had  chapped  hands,  and  nearly  every  one  had  the  skin 
worn  off  the  knuckle  of  his  middle  finger  from  resting 
it  on  the  ground  when  he  shot.  You  could  use  a 
knuckle-dabster  of  fur  or  cloth  to  rest  your  hand  on, 
but  it  was  considered  effeminate,  and  in  the  excite- 
ment you  were  apt  to  forget  it,  anyway.  Marbles  were 
always  very  exciting,  and  were  played  with  a  clamor  as 
incessant  as  that  of  a  blackbird  roost.  A  great  many 
points  were  always  coming  up  :  whether  a  boy  took-up, 
or  edged  beyond  the  very  place  where  his  toy  lay  wker. 
he  shot ;  whether  he  knuckled  down,  or  kept  his  hand 
on  the  ground  in  shooting ;  whether,  when  another  boy's 
toy  drove  one  marble  against  another  and  knocked  both 
out  of  the  ring,  he  holloed  "  Fen  doubs !"  before  the 
other  fellow  holloed  "  Doubs  !"  whether  a  marble  was  in 
or  out  of  the  ring,  and  whether  the  umpire's  decision 
was  just  or  not.  The  gambling  and  the  quarrelling  went 
on  till  the  second-bell  rang  for  school,  and  began  again 
as  soon  as  the  boys  could  get  back  to  their  rings  when 
school  let  out.  The  rings  were  usually  marked  on  the 
ground  with  a  stick,  but  when  there  was  a  great  hurry, 
or  there  was  no  stick  handy,  the  side  of  a  fellow's  boot 
would  do,  and  the  hollows  for  knucks  were  always 
bored  by  twirling  round  on  your  boot-heel.  This  helped 
a  boy  to  wear  out  his  boots  very  rapidly,  but  that  was 
what  his  boots  were  made  for,  just  as  the  sidewalks 
were  made  for  the  boys'  marble-rings,  and  a  citizen's 
character  for  cleverness  or  meanness  was  fixed  by  his 


A  citizen's  character   for   cleverness  or   meanness  was 

FIXED  BY  HIS  WALKING   ROUND   OR  OVER  THE   RINGS." 


PLATS   AND  PASTIMES.  83 

walking  round  or  over  the  rings.  Cleverness  was  used 
in  the  Virginia  sense  for  amiability ;  a  person  who  was 
clever  in  the  English  sense  was  smart. 

There  were  many  games  of  ball.  Two-cornered  cat 
was  played  by  four  boys :  two  to  bat,  and  two  behind 
the  batters  to  catch  and  pitcb.  Three-cornered  cat  was, 
I  believe,  the  game  which  has  since  grown  into  base- 
ball, and  was  even  then  sometimes  called  so.  But  soak- 
about  was  the  favorite  game  at  school,  and  it  simply 
consisted  of  hitting  any  other  boy  you  could  with  the 
ball  when  you  could  get  it.  Foot-ball  was  always  played 
with  a  bladder,  and  it  came  in  season  with  the  cold 
weather  when  the  putting  up  of  beef  began ;  the  busi- 
ness was  practically  regarded  by  the  boys  as  one  under- 
taken to  supply  them  with  bladders  for  foot-balls. 

When  the  warm  weather  came  on  in  April,  and  the 
boys  got  off  their  shoes  for  good,  there  came  races,  in 
which  they  seemed  to  fly  on  wings.  Life  has  a  good 
many  innocent  joys  for  the  human  animal,  but  surely 
none  so  ecstatic  as  the  boy  feels  when  his  bare  foot  first 
touches  the  breast  of  our  mother  earth  in  the  spring. 
Something  thrills  through  him  then  from  the  heart  of 
her  inmost  being  that  makes  him  feel  kin  with  her,  and 
cousin  to  all  her  dumb  children  of  the  grass  and  trees. 
His  blood  leaps  as  wildly  as  at  that  kiss  of  the  waters 
when  he  plunges  into  their  arms  in  June  ;  there  is  some- 
thing even  finer  and  sweeter  in  the  rapture  of  the  earlier 
bliss.  The  day  will  not  be  long  enough  for  his  flights, 
his  races ;  he  aches  more  with  regret  than  with  fatigue 
when  he  must  leave  the  happy  paths  under  the  stars 
outside,  and  creep  into  his  bed.  It  is  all  like  some 
glimpse,  some  foretaste  of  the  heavenly  time  when  the 
earth  and  her  sons  shall  be  reconciled  in  a  deathless 


84  a  boy's  town. 

love,  and  they  shall  not  be  thankless,  nor  she  a  step- 
mother any  more. 

About  the  only  drawback  to  going  barefoot  was  stump* 
ing  your  toe,  which  you  were  pretty  sure  to  do  whea 
you  first  took  off  your  shoes  and  before  you  had  get 
used  to  your  new  running  weight.  When  you  struck 
your  toe  against  a  rock,  or  anything,  you  caught  it  up 
in  your  hand,  and  hopped  about  a  hundred  yards  bef or<; 
you  could  bear  to  put  it  to  the  ground.  Then  you  sa  s 
down,  and  held  it  as  tight  as  you  could,  and  cried  ove  r 
it,  till  the  fellows  helped  you  to  the  pump  to  wash  th « 
blood  off.  Then,  as  soon  as  you  could,  you  limped 
home  for  a  rag,  and  kept  pretty  quiet  about  it  so  as  to 
get  out  again  without  letting  on  to  your  mother. 

With  the  races  came  the  other  plays  which  involved 
running,  like  hide-and-go-whoop,  and  tag,  and  dog-on- 
wood,  and  horse,  which  I  dare  say  the  boys  of  othe  i 
times  and  other  wheres  know  by  different  names 
The  Smith-house  neighborhood  was  a  famous  place  fo  .• 
them  all,  both  because  there  were  such  lots  of  boys,  am  i 
because  there  were  so  many  sheds  and  stables  when 
you  could  hide,  and  everything.  There  was  a  town 
pump  there  for  you,  so  that  you  would  not  have  to  g» , 
into  the  house  for  a  drink  when  you  got  thirsty,  and 
perhaps  be  set  to  doing  something;  and  there  went 
plenty  of  boards  for  teeter  and  see-saw  ;  and  somel^v 
that  neighborhood  seemed  to  understand  boys,  and  did 
not  molest  them  in  any  way.  In  a  vacant  lot  behiud 
one  of  the  houses  there  was  a  whirligig,  that  you  could 
ride  on  and  get  sick  in  about  a  minute ;  it  was  splen- 
did. There  was  a  family  of  German  boys  living  across 
the  street,  that  you  could  stone  whenever  they  came  out 
of  their  front  gate,  for  the  simple  and  sufficient  reason 


PLATS    AND   PASTIMES.  85 

that  they  were  Dutchmen,  and  without  going  to  the 
trouble  of  a  quarrel  with  them.  My  boy  was  not  al- 
lowed to  stone  them  ;  but  when  he  was  with  the  other 
fellows,  and  his  elder  brother  was  not  along,  he  could 
not  help  stoning  them. 

There  were  shade  trees  all  along  that  street,  that  you 
could  climb  if  you  wanted  to,  or  that  you  could  lie  down 
under  when  you  had  run  yourself  out  of  breath,  or  play 
tnumble-the-peg.  My  boy  distinctly  remembered  that 
under  one  of  these  trees  his  elder  brother  first  broached 
to  him  that  awful  scheme  of  reform  about  fibbing,  and 
\pplied  to  their  own  lives  the  moral  of  "  The  Trippings 
of  Tom  Pepper ;"  he  remembered  how  a  conviction  of 
the  righteousness  of  the  scheme  sank  into  his  soul,  and 
he  could  not  withhold  his  consent.  Under  the  same 
i;ree,  and  very  likely  at  the  same  time,  a  solemn  conclave 
of  boys,  all  the  boys  there  were,  discussed  the  feasi- 
bility of  tying  a  tin  can  to  a  dog's  tail,  and  seeing  how 
he  would  act.  They  had  all  heard  of  the  thing,  but 
Hone  of  them  had  seen  it ;  and  it  was  not  so  much  a 
question  of  whether  you  ought  to  do  a  thing  that  on  the 
rery  face  of  it  would  be  so  much  fun,  and  if  it  did  not 
3  muse  the  dog  as  highly  as  anybody,  could  certainly  do 
bim  no  harm,  as  it  was  a  question  of  whose  dog  you 
should  get  to  take  the  dog's  part  in  the  sport.  It  was 
beld  that  an  old  dog  would  probably  not  keep  still  long 
enough  for  you  to  tie  the  can  on ;  he  would  have  his 
suspicions ;  or  else  he  would  not  run  when  the  can  was 
Jied  on,  but  very  likely  just  go  and  lie  down  somewhere. 
The  lot  finally  fell  to  a  young  yellow  dog  belonging  to 
One  of  the  boys,  and  the  owner  at  once  ran  home  to  get 
>'iim,  and  easily  lured  him  back  to  the  other  boys  with 
'  lotteries  and  caresses.     The  flatteries  and  caresses  were 


86  A  boy's  town. 

not  needed,  for  a  dog  is  always  glad  to  go  with  boys, 
upon  any  pretext,  and  so  far  from  thinking  that  he  does 
them  a  favor,  he  feels  himself  greatly  honored.  But  I 
dare  say  the  boy  had  a  guilty  fear  that  if  his  dog  had 
known  why  he  was  invited  to  be  of  that  party  of  boys, 
he  might  have  pleaded  a  previous  engagement.  As  it 
was,  he  came  joyfully,  and  allowed  the  can  to  be  tied 
to  his  tail  without  misgiving.  If  there  had  been  any 
question  with  the  boys  as  to  whether  he  would  enter 
fully  into  the  spirit  of  the  affair,  it  must  have  been  in- 
stantly dissipated  by  the  dog's  behavior  when  he  felt 
the  loop  tighten  on  his  tail,  and  looked  round  to  see  what 
the  matter  was.  The  boys  hardly  had  a  chance  to 
cheer  him  before  he  flashed  out  of  sight  round  the  cor- 
ner, and  they  hardly  had  time  to  think  before  he  flashed 
into  sight  again  from  the  other  direction.  He  whizzed 
along  the  ground,  and  the  can  hurtled  in  the  air,  but 
there  was  no  other  sound,  and  the  cheers  died  away  on 
the  boys'  lips.  The  boy  who  owned  the  dog  began  to 
cry,  and  the  other  fellows  began  to  blame  him  for  not 
stopping  the  dog.  But  he  might  as  well  have  tried  to 
stop  a  streak  of  lightning ;  the  only  thing  you  could  do 
was  to  keep  out  of  the  dog's  way.  As  an  experiment  it 
was  successful  beyond  the  wildest  dreams  of  its  projec- 
tors, though  it  would  have  been  a  sort  of  relief  if  the 
dog  had  taken  some  other  road,  for  variety,  or  had  even 
reversed  his  course.  But  he  kept  on  as  he  began,  and 
by  a  common  impulse  the  boys  made  up  their  minds 
to  abandon  the  whole  affair  to  him.  They  all  ran  home 
and  hid,  or  else  walked  about  and  tried  to  ignore  it. 
But  at  this  point  the  grown-up  people  began  to  be  in- 
terested ;  the  mothers  came  to  their  doors  to  see  what 
was  the  matter.     Yet  even  the  mothers  were  powerless 


PLATS   AND   PASTIMES.  87 

in  a  case  like  that,  and  the  enthusiast  had  to  be  left  to 
his  fate.  He  was  found  under  a  barn  at  last,  breathless, 
almost  lifeless,  and  he  tried  to  bite  the  man  who  untied 
J  he  can  from  his  tail.  Eventually  he  got  well  again, 
i<ind  lived  to  be  a  solemn  warning  to  the  boys ;  he  was 
nouchingly  distrustful  of  their  advances  for  a  time,  but 
lie  finally  forgot  and  forgave  everything.  They  did  not 
jtorget,  and  they  never  tried  tying  a  tin  can  to  a  dog's 
tail  again,  among  all  the  things  they  tried  and  kept  try- 
ing. Once  was  enough;  and  they  never  even  liked  to 
talk  of  it,  the  sight  was  so  awful.  They  were  really 
fond  of  the  dog,  and  if  they  could  have  thought  he 
n'ould  take  the  matter  so  seriously,  they  would  not 
'iave  tried  to  have  that  kind  of  fun  with  him.  It  cured 
liem  of  ever  wanting  to  have  that  kind  of  fun  with  any 
log. 

As  the  weather  softened,  tops  came  in  some  weeks 
iter  marbles  went  out,  and  just  after  foot-races  were 
.ver,  and  a  little  before  swimming  began.     At  first  the 
>oys  bought  their  tops  at  the  stores,  but  after  a  while 
he  boy  whose  father  had  the  turning-shop  on  the  Hy- 
draulic learned  to  turn  their  tops,  and  did  it  for  nothing, 
fhich  was  cheaper  than  buying  tops,  especially  as  he 
airnished  the  wood,  too,  and  you  only  had  to  get  the 
wire  peg  yourself.     I  believe  he  was  the  same  boy  who 
wanted  to  be  a  pirate  and  ended  by  inventing  a  steam- 
governor.     He  was  very  ingenious,  and  he  knew  how  to 
turn  a  top  out  of  beech  or  maple  that  would  outspin  any- 
thing you  could  get  in  a  store.     The  boys  usually  chose 
a  firm,  smooth  piece  of  sidewalk,  under  one  of  the  big 
trees  in  the  Smith  neighborhood,  and  spun  their  tops 
there.     A  fellow  launched  his  top  into  the  ring,  and  the 
rest  waited  till  it  began  to  go  to  sleep,  that  is,  to  settle  in 


88  A  boy's  town. 

one  place,  and  straighten  up  and  spin  silently,  as  if 
standing  still.  Then  any  fellow  had  a  right  to  peg  at  it 
with  his  top,  and  if  he  hit  it,  he  won  it ;  and  if  he  split 
it,  as  sometimes  happened,  the  fellow  that  owned  it  had 
to  give  him  a  top.  The  boys  came  with  their  pockets 
bulged  out  with  tops,  hut  before  long  they  had  to  go  for 
more  tops  to  that  boy  who  could  turn  them.  From  this 
it  was  but  another  step  to  go  to  the  shop  with  him  and 
look  on  while  he  turned  the  tops ;  and  then  in  process 
of  time  the  boys  discovered  that  the  smooth  floor  of  the 
shop  was  a  better  place  to  fight  tops  than  the  best  piece 
of  sidewalk.  They  would  have  given  whole  Saturdays 
to  the  sport  there,  but  when  they  got  to  holloing  too 
loudly  the  boy's  father  would  come  up,  and  then  they 
would  all  run.  It  was  considered  mean  in  him,  but  the 
boy  himself  was  awfully  clever,  and  the  first  thing  the 
fellows  knew  they  were  back  there  again.  Some  few  of 
the  boys  had  humming-tops ;  but  though  these  pleased 
by  their  noise,  they  were  not  much  esteemed,  and  could 
make  no  head  against  the  good  old  turnip-shaped  tops, 
solid  and  weighty,  that  you  could  wind  up  with  a  stout 
cotton  cord,  and  launch  with  perfect  aim  from  the  flat 
button  held  between  your  fore  finger  and  middle  finger. 
Some  of  the  boys  had  a  very  pretty  art  in  the  twirl  they 
gave  the  top,  and  could  control  its  course,  somewhat  as 
a  skilful  pitcher  can  govern  that  of  a  base-ball. 

I  do  not  know  why  a  certain  play  went  out,  but  sud- 
denly the  fellows  who  had  been  playing  ball,  or  marbles, 
or  tops,  would  find  themselves  playing  something  else. 
Kites  came  in  just  about  the  time  of  the  greatest  heat  in 
summer,  and  lasted  a  good  while ;  but  could  not  have 
lasted  as  long  as  the  heat,  which  began  about  the  first 
of  June,  and  kept  on  well  through  September ;  no  play 


PLAYS    AND   PASTIMES.  89 

could  last  so  long  as  that,  and  I  suppose  kite-flying 
must  have  died  into  swimming  after  the  Fourth  of 
July.  The  kites  were  of  various  shapes :  bow  kites, 
two-stick  kites,  and  house  kites.  A  bow  kite  could  be 
made  with  half  a  barrel  hoop  carried  over  the  top  of  a 
cross,  but  it  was  troublesome  to  make,  and  it  did  not  fly 
very  well,  and  somehow  it  was  thought  to  look  baby- 
ish ;  but  it  was  held  in  greater  respect  than  the  two- 
stick  kite,  which  only  the  smallest  boys  played  with, 
and  which  was  made  by  fastening  two  sticks  in  the 
form  of  a  cross.  Any  fellow  more  than  six  years  old 
who  appeared  on  the  Commons  with  a  two-stick  kite 
would  have  been  met  with  jeers,  as  a  kind  of  girl.  The 
favorite  kite,  the  kite  that  balanced  best,  took  the 
wind  best,  and  flew  best,  and  that  would  stand  all  day 
when  you  got  it  up,  was  the  house  kite,  which  was  made 
of  three  sticks,  and  shaped  nearly  in  the  form  of  the 
gable  of  a  gambrel-roof  ed  house,  only  smaller  at  the  base 
than  at  the  point  where  the  roof  would  begin.  The  out- 
line of  all  these  kites  was  given,  and  the  sticks  stayed 
in  place  by  a  string  carried  taut  from  stick  to  stick, 
which  was  notched  at  the  ends  to  hold  it ;  sometimes 
the  sticks  were  held  with  a  tack  at  the  point  of  cross- 
ing, and  sometimes  they  were  mortised  into  one  another  ; 
but  this  was  apt  to  weaken  them.  The  frame  was  laid 
down  on  a  sheet  of  paper,  and  the  paper  was  cut  an 
inch  or  two  larger,  and  then  pasted  and  folded  over  the 
string.  Most  of  the  boys  used  a  paste  made  of  flour 
and  cold  water ;  but  my  boy  and  his  brother  could 
usually  get  paste  from  the  printing-office ;  and  when 
they  could  not  they  would  make  it  by  mixing  flour  and 
water  cream-thick,  and  slowly  boiling  it.  That  was  a 
paste  that  would  hold  till  the  cows  came  home,  the  boys 

■7 


00  A  boy's  town. 

said,  and  my  boy  was  courted  for  his  skill  in  mating 
it.  But  after  the  kite  was  pasted,  and  dried  in  the  sun, 
or  behind  the  kitchen  stove,  if  you  were  in  very  much 
of  a  hurry  (and  you  nearly  always  were),  it  had  to  be 
hung,  with  belly-bands  and  tail-bands ;  that  is,  with  strings 
carried  from  stick  to  stick  over  the  face  and  at  the  bot- 
tom, to  attach  the  cord  for  flying  it  and  to  fasten  on  the 
tail  by.  This  took  a  good  deal  of  art,  and  unless  it  were 
well  done  the  kite  would  not  balance,  but  would  be  al- 
ways pitching  and  darting.  Then  the  tail  had  to  be  of 
just  the  right  weight ;  if  it  was  too  heavy  the  kite  kept 
sinking,  even  after  you  got  it  up  where  otherwise  it  would 
stand ;  if  too  light,  the  kite  would  dart,  and  dash  itself 
to  pieces  on  the  ground.  A  very  pretty  tail  was  made 
by  tying  twists  of  paper  across  a  string  a  foot  apart, 
till  there  were  enough  to  balance  the  kite  ;  but  this  sort 
of  tail  was  apt  to  get  tangled,  and  the  best  tail  was 
made  of  a  long  streamer  of  cotton  rags,  with  a  gay  tuft 
of  dog-fennel  at  the  end.  Dog-fennel  was  added  or 
taken  away  till  just  the  right  weight  was  got ;  and  when 
this  was  done,  after  several  experimental  tests,  the  kite 
was  laid  flat  on  its  face  in  the  middle  of  the  road,  or 
on  a  long  stretch  of  smooth  grass ;  the  bands  were  ar- 
ranged, and  the  tail  stretched  carefully  out  behind,  where 
it  would  not  catch  on  bushes.  You  unwound  a  great 
length  of  twine,  running  backward,  and  letting  the  twine 
slip  swiftly  through  your  hands  till  you  had  run  enough 
out ;  then  you  seized  the  ball,  and  with  one  look  over 
your  shoulder  to  see  that  all  was  right,  started  swiftly 
forward.  The  kite  reared  itself  from  the  ground,  and, 
swaying  gracefully  from  side  to  side,  rose  slowly  into 
the  air,  with  its  long  tail  climbing  after  it  till  the  fennel 
tuft  swung  free.     If  there  was  not  much  surface  wind 


PLATS   AND  PASTIMES.  91 

you  might  have  to  run  a  little  way,  hut  as  soon  as  the 
kite  caught  the  upper  currents  it  straightened  itself, 
pulled  the  twine  taut,  and  steadily  mounted,  while  you 
gave  it  more  and  more  twine  ;  if  the  breeze  was  strong, 
the  cord  burned  as  it  ran  through  your  hands  ;  till  at  last 
the  kite  stood  still  in  the  sky,  at  such  a  height  that  the 
cord  holding  it  sometimes  melted  out  of  sight  in  the 
distance. 

If  it  was  a  hot  July  day  the  sky  would  be  full  of 
kites,  and  the  Commons  would  be  dotted  over  with 
boys  holding  them,  or  setting  them  up,  or  winding 
them  in,  and  all  talking  and  screaming  at  the  tops  of 
their  voices  under  the  roasting  sun.  One  might  think 
that  kite-flying,  at  least,  could  be  carried  on  quietly  and 
peaceably ;  but  it  was  not.  Besides  the  wild  debate  of 
the  rival  excellences  of  the  different  kites,  there  were 
always  quarrels  from  getting  the  strings  crossed ;  for, 
as  the  boys  got  their  kites  up,  they  drew  together  for 
company  and  for  an  easier  comparison  of  their  merits. 
It  was  only  a  mean  boy  who  would  try  to  cross  another 
fellow's  string ;  but  sometimes  accidents  would  happen  ; 
two  kites  would  become  entangled,  and  both  would  have 
to  be  hauled  in,  while  their  owners  cried  and  scolded, 
and  the  other  fellows  cheered  and  laughed.  Now  and 
then  the  tail  of  a  kite  would  part  midway,  and  then  the 
kite  would  begin  to  dart  violently  from  side  to  side,  and 
then  to  whirl  round  and  round  in  swifter  and  narrower 
circles  till  it  dashed  itself  to  the  ground.  Sometimes 
the  kite-string  would  break,  and  the  kite  would  waver 
and  fall  like  a  bird  shot  in  the  wing ;  and  the  owner  of 
the  kite,  and  all  the  fellows  who  had  no  kites,  would 
run  to  get  it  where  it  came  down,  perhaps  a  mile  or  more 
away.     It  usually  came  down  in  a  tree,  and  they  had  to 


92  a  boy's  town. 

climb  for  it ;  but  sometimes  it  lodged  so  high  that  no 
one  could  reach  it ;  aud  then  it  was  slowly  beaten  and 
washed  away  in  the  winds  and  rains,  and  its  long  tail 
left  streaming  all  winter  from  the  naked  bough  where 
it  had  caught.  It  was  so  good  for  kites  on  the  Com- 
mons, because  there  were  no  trees  there,  and  not  even 
fences,  but  a  vast  open  stretch  of  level  grass,  which  the 
cows  and  geese  kept  cropped  to  the  earth ;  and  for  the 
most  part  the  boys  had  no  trouble  with  their  kites  there. 
Some  of  them  had  paper  fringe  pasted  round  the  edges 
of  their  kites  ;  this  made  a  fine  rattling  as  the  kite  rose, 
and  when  the  kite  stood,  at  the  end  of  its  string,  you 
could  hear  the  humming  if  you  put  your  ear  to  the  twine. 
But  the  most  fun  was  sending  up  messengers.  The 
messengers  were  cut  out  of  thick  paper,  with  a  slit  at 
one  side,  so  as  to  slip  over  the  string,  which  would  be 
pulled  level  long  enough  to  give  the  messenger  a  good 
start,  and  then  released,  when  the  wind  would  catch  the 
little  circle,  and  drive  it  up  the  long  curving  incline  till 
it  reached  the  kite. 

It  was  thought  a  great  thing  in  a  kite  to  pull,  and  it  was 
a  favor  to  another  boy  to  let  him  take  hold  of  j'our  string 
and  feel  how  your  kite  pulled.  If  you  wanted  to  play 
mumble-the-peg,  or  anything,  while  your  kite  was  up, 
you  tied  it  to  a  stake  in  the  ground,  or  gave  it  to  some 
other  fellow  to  hold ;  there  were  always  lots  of  fellows 
eager  to  hold  it.  But  you  had  to  be  careful  how  you 
let  a  little  fellow  hold  it ;  for,  if  it  was  a  very  powerful 
kite,  it  would  take  him  up.  It  was  not  certain  just 
how  strong  a  kite  had  to  be  to  take  a  small  boy  up,  and 
nobody  had  ever  seen  a  kite  do  it,  but  everybody  ex- 
pected to  see  it. 


KITE   TIME. 


IX. 

CIRCUSES   AND   SHOWS. 

What  every  boy  expected  to  do,  some  time  or  other, 
was  to  run  off.  He  expected  to  do  this  because  the 
scheme  offered  an  unlimited  field  to  the  imagination, 
and  because  its  fulfilment  would  give  him  the  highest 
distinction  among  the  other  fellows.  To  run  off  was 
held  to  be  the  only  way  for  a  boy  to  right  himself  against 
the  wrongs  and  hardships  of  a  boy's  life.  As  far  as  the 
Boy's  Town  was  concerned,  no  boy  had  anything  to 
complain  of ;  the  boys  had  the  best  time  in  the  world 
there,  and  in  a  manner  they  knew  it.  But  there  were 
certain  things  that  they  felt  no  boy  ought  to  stand, 
and  these  things  were  sometimes  put  upon  them  at 
school,  but  usually  at  home.  In  fact,  nearly  all  the 
things  that  a  fellow  intended  to  run  off  for  were  done 
to  him  by  those  who  ought  to  have  been  the  kindest  to 
him.  Some  boys'  mothers  had  the  habit  of  making 
them  stop  and  do  something  for  them  just  when  they 
were  going  away  with  the  fellows.  Others  would  not 
let  them  go  in  swimming  as  often  as  they  wanted,  and, 
if  they  saw  them  with  their  shirts  on  wrong  side  out, 
would  not  believe  that  they  could  get  turned  in  climb- 
ing a  fence.  Others  made  them  split  kindling  and 
carry  in  wood,  and  even  saw  wood.  None  of  these 
things,  in  a  simple  form,  was  enough  to  make  a  boy  run 
off,  but  they  prepared  his  mind  for  it,  and  when  com- 


94  A  boy's  town. 

plicated  with  whipping  they  were  just  cause  for  it. 
Weeding  the  garden,  though,  was  a  thing  that  almost, 
in  itself,  was  enough  to  make  a  fellow  run  off. 

Not  many  of  the  boys  really  had  to  saw  wood,  though 
a  good  many  of  the  fellows'  fathers  had  saws  and  bucks 
in  their  wood-sheds.  There  were  public  sawyers  who 
did  most  of  the  wood-sawing ;  and  they  came  up  with 
their  bucks  on  their  shoulders,  and  asked  for  the  job 
almost  as  soon  as  the  wood  was  unloaded  before  your 
door.  The  most  popular  one  with  the  boys  was  a  poor 
half-wit  known  among  them  as  Morn ;  and  he  was  a  fa- 
vorite with  them  because  he  had  fits,  and  because,  when 
he  had  a  fit,  he  would  seem  to  fly  all  over  the  wood-pile. 
The  boys  would  leave  anything  to  see  Morn  in  a  fit,  and 
he  always  had  a  large  crowd  round  him  as  soon  as  the 
cry  went  out  that  he  was  beginning  to  have  one.  They 
watched  the  hapless  creature  with  grave,  uupitying,  yet 
not  unfriendly  interest,  too  ignorant  of  the  dark  ills  of 
life  to  know  how  deeply  tragic  was  the  spectacle  that 
entertained  them,  and  how  awfully  present  in  Morn's 
contortions  was  the  mystery  of  God's  ways  with  his 
children,  some  of  whom  he  gives  to  happiness  and  some 
to  misery.  When  Morn  began  to  pick  himself  weakly 
up,  with  eyes  of  pathetic  bewilderment,  they  helped 
him  find  his  cap,  and  tried  to  engage  him  in  conversa- 
tion, for  the  pleasure  of  seeing  him  twist  his  mouth  when 
he  said,  of  a  famous  town  drunkard  whom  he  admired, 
"  He's  a  strong  man  ;  he  eats  liquor."  It  was  probably 
poor  Morn's  ambition  to  eat  liquor  himself,  and  the  boys 
who  followed  that  drunkard  about  to  plague  him  had  a 
vague  respect  for  his  lamentable  appetite. 

None  of  the  boys  ever  did  run  off,  except  the  son  of 
one  of  the  preachers.     He  was  a  big  boy,  whom  my  boy 


CIRCUSES   AND   SHOWS.  95 

remotely  heard  of,  but  never  saw,  for  he  lived  in  another 
part  of  the  town ;  but  his  adventure  was  known  to  all 
the  boys,  and  his  heroism  rated  high  among  them.  It 
took  nothing  from  this,  in  their  eyes,  that  he  was  found, 
homesick  and  crying  in  Cincinnati,  and  was  glad  to  come 
back — the  great  fact  was  that  he  had  run  off ;  nothing 
could  change  or  annul  that.  If  he  had  made  any  mis- 
take, it  was  in  not  running  off  with  a  circus,  for  that 
was  the  true  way  of  running  off.  Then,  if  you  were 
ever  seen  away  from  home,  you  were  seen  tumbling 
through  a  hoop  and  alighting  on  the  crupper  of  a  bare- 
backed piebald,  and  if  you  ever  came  home  you  came 
home  in  a  gilded  chariot,  and  you  flashed  upon  the  do- 
mestic circle  in  flesh-colored  tights  and  spangled  breech- 
cloth.  As  soon  as  the  circus-bills  began  to  be  put  up 
you  began  to  hear  that  certain  boys  were  going  to  run 
off  with  that  circus,  and  the  morning  after  it  left  town 
you  heard  they  had  gone,  but  they  always  turned  up  at 
school  just  the  same.  It  was  believed  that  the  circus- 
men  would  take  any  boy  who  wanted  to  go  with  them, 
and  would  fight  off  his  friends  if  they  tried  to  get  him 
away. 

The  boys  made  a  very  careful  study  of  the  circus- 
bills,  and  afterwards,  when  the  circus  came,  they  held 
the  performance  to  a  strict  account  for  any  difference 
between  the  feats  and  their  representation.  For  a  fort- 
night beforehand  they  worked  themselves  up  for  the  ar- 
rival of  the  circus  into  a  fever  of  fear  and  hope,  for  it 
was  always  a  question  with  a  great  many  whether  they 
could  get  their  fathers  to  give  them  the  money  to  go 
in.  The  full  price  was  two  bits,  and  the  half-price  was 
a  bit,  or  a  Spanish  real,  then  a  commoner  coin  than  the 
American  dime  in  the  West ;  and  every  boy,  for  that 


96  A   BOY7S   TOWN. 

time  only,  wished  to  be  little  enough  to  look  young 
enough  to  go  in  for  a  bit.  Editors  of  newspapers  had 
a  free  ticket  for  every  member  of  their  families;  and 
my  boy  was  sure  of  going  to  the  circus  from  the  first 
rumor  of  its  coming.  But  he  was  none  the  less  deeply 
thrilled  by  the  coming  evTent,  and  he  was  up  early  on 
the  morning  of  the  great  day,  to  go  out  and  meet  the 
circus  procession  beyond  the  corporation  line. 

I  do  not  really  know  how  boys  live  through  the  won- 
der and  the  glory  of  such  a  sight.  Once  there  were  two 
chariots — one  held  the  band  in  red-and-blue  uniforms, 
and  was  drawn  by  eighteen  piebald  horses ;  and  the 
other  was  drawn  by  a  troop  of  Shetland  ponies,  and  car- 
ried in  a  vast  mythical  sea-shell  little  boys  in  spangled 
tights  and  little  girls  in  the  gauze  skirts  and  wings  of 
fairies.  There  was  not  a  flaw  in  this  splendor  to  the 
young  eyes  that  gloated  on  it,  and  that  followed  it  in 
rapture  through  every  turn  and  winding  of  its  course  in 
the  Boy's  Town ;  nor  in  the  magnificence  of  the  actors 
and  actresses,  who  came  riding  two  by  two  in  their  cir- 
cus-dresses after  the  chariots,  and  looking  some  haughty 
and  contemptuous,  and  others  quiet  and  even  bored,  as 
if  it  were  nothing  to  be  part  of  such  a  procession.  The 
boys  tried  to  make  them  out  by  the  pictures  and  names 
on  the  bills  :  which  was  Rivers,  the  bare-back  rider,  and 
which  was  O'Dale,  the  champion  tumbler ;  which  was 
the  India-rubber  man,  which  the  ring-master,  which  the 
clown.  Covered  with  dust,  gasping  with  the  fatigue  of 
a  three  hours'  run  beside  the  procession,  but  fresh  at 
heart  as  in  the  beginning,  they  arrived  with  it  on  the 
Commons,  where  the  tent-wagons  were  already  drawn 
up,  and  the  ring  was  made,  and  mighty  men  were  driv- 
ing the  iron-headed  tent-stakes,  and  stretching  the  ropes 


CIRCUSES   AND   SHOWS.  97 

of  the  great  skeleton  of  the  pavilion  which  they  were 
just  going-  to  clothe  with  canvas.  The  boys  were  not 
allowed  to  come  anywhere  near,  except  three  or  four 
who  got  leave  to  fetch  water  from  a  neighboring  well, 
and  thought  themselves  richly  paid  with  half-price  tick- 
ets. The  other  boys  were  proud  to  pass  a  word  with 
them  as  they  went  by  with  their  brimming  buckets  ;  fel- 
lows who  had  money  to  go  in  would  have  been  glad  to 
carry  water  just  for  the  glory  of  coming  close  to  the 
circus-men.  They  stood  about  in  twos  and  threes,  and 
lay  upon  the  grass  in  groups  debating  whether  a  tan- 
bark  ring  was  better  than  a  sawdust  ring ;  there  were 
different  opinions.  They  came  as  near  the  wagons  as 
they  dared,  and  looked  at  the  circus-horses  munching 
hay  from  the  tail-boards,  just  like  common  horses.  The 
wagons  were  left  standing  outside  of  the  tent ;  but  when 
it  was  up,  the  horses  were  taken  into  the  dressing- 
room,  and  then  the  boys,  with  many  a  backward  look 
at  the  wide  spread  of  canvas,  and  the  flags  and  stream- 
ers floating  over  it  from  the  centre-pole  (the  centre-pole 
was  revered  almost  like  a  distinguished  personage),  ran 
home  to  dinner  so  as  to  get  back  good  and  early,  and 
be  among  the  first  to  go  in.  All  round,  before  the  cir- 
cus doors  were  open,  the  doorkeepers  of  the  side-shows 
were  inviting  people  to  come  in  and  see  the  giants  and 
fat  woman  and  boa-constrictors,  and  there  were  stands 
for  peanuts  and  candy  and  lemonade ;  the  vendors 
cried,  "  Ice-cold  lemonade,  from  fifteen  hundred  miles 
under  ground !  Walk  up,  roll  up,  tumble  up,  any  way 
to  get  up !"  The  boys  thought  this  brilliant  drolling, 
but  they  had  no  time  to  listen  after  the  doors  were 
open,  and  they  had  no  money  to  spend  on  side-shows  or 
dainties,  anyway.     Inside  the  tent,  they  found  it  dark 


98  A  boy's  TOWN. 

and  cool,  and  their  hearts  thumped  in  their  throats  with 
the  wild  joy  of  being  there ;  they  recognized  one  an- 
other with  amaze,  as  if  they  had  not  met  for  years,  and 
the  excitement  kept  growing,  as  other  fellows  came  in. 
It  was  lots  of  fun,  too,  watching  the  country -jakes,  as  the 
boys  called  the  farmer-folk,  and  seeing  how  green  they 
looked,  and  how  some  of  them  tried  to  act  smart  with 
the  circus-men  that  came  round  with  oranges  to  sell. 
But  the  great  thing  was  to  see  whether  fellows  that  said 
they  were  going  to  hook  in  really  got  in.  The  boys 
held  it  to  be  a  high  and  creditable  thing  to  hook  into  a 
show  of  any  kind,  but  hooking  into  a  circus  was  some- 
thing that  a  fellow  ought  to  be  held  in  special  honor  for 
doing.  He  ran  great  risks,  and  if  he  escaped  the  vig- 
ilance of  the  massive  circus-man  who  patrolled  the  out- 
side of  the  tent  with  a  cowhide  and  a  bulldog,  perhaps 
he  merited  the  fame  he  was  sure  to  win. 

I  do  not  know  where  boys  get  some  of  the  notions 
of  morality  that  govern  them.  These  notions  are  like 
the  sports  and  plays  that  a  boy  leaves  off  as  he  gets 
older  to  the  boys  that  are  younger.  He  outgrows  them, 
and  other  boys  grow  into  them,  and  then  outgrow  them 
as  he  did.  Perhaps  they  come  down  to  the  boyhood 
of  our  time  from  the  boyhood  of  the  race,  and  the  un- 
written laws  of  conduct  may  have  prevailed  among  the 
earliest  Aryans  on  the  plains  of  Asia  that  I  now  find  so 
strange  in  a  retrospect  of  the  Boy's  Town.  The  stand- 
ard of  honor  there  was,  in  a  certain  way,  very  high 
among  the  boys ;  they  would  have  despised  a  thief  as 
he  deserved,  and  I  cannot  remember  one  of  them  who 
might  not  have  been  safely  trusted.  None  of  them 
would  have  taken  an  apple  out  of  a  market-wagon,  or 
stolen  a  melon  from  a  farmer  who  came  to  town  with 


CIRCUSES   AND   SHOWS.  99 

it ;  but  they  would  all  have  thought  it  fun,  if  not  right, 
to  rob  an  orchard  or  hook  a  watermelon  out  of  a  patch. 
This  would  have  been  a  foray  into  the  enemy's  country, 
and  the  fruit  of  the  adventure  would  have  been  the 
same  as  the  plunder  of  a  city,  or  the  capture  of  a  ves- 
sel belonging  to  him  on  the  high  seas.  In  the  same 
way,  if  one  of  the  boys  had  seen  a  circus-man  drop  a 
quarter,  he  would  have  hurried  to  give  it  back  to  him, 
but  he  would  only  have  been  proud  to  hook  into  the 
circus-man's  show,  and  the  other  fellows  would  have 
been  proud  of  his  exploit,  too,  as  something  that  did 
honor  to  them  all.  As  a  person  who  enclosed  bounds 
and  forbade  trespass,  the  circus-man  constituted  himself 
the  enemy  of  every  boy  who  respected  himself,  and 
challenged  him  to  practise  any  sort  of  strategy.  There 
was  not  a  boy  in  the  crowd  that  my  boy  went  with  wiio 
would  have  been  allowed  to  hook  into  a  circus  by  his 
parents  ;  yet  hooking  in  was  an  ideal  that  was  cherished 
among  them,  that  was  talked  of,  and  that  was  even 
sometimes  attempted,  though  not  often.  Once,  when 
a  fellow  really  hooked  in,  and  joined  the  crowd  that 
had  ignobly  paid,  one  of  the  fellows  could  not  stand 
it.  He  asked  him  just  how  and  where  he  got  in,  and 
then  he  went  to  the  door,  and  got  back  his  money 
from  the  doorkeeper  upon  the  plea  that  he  did  not  feel 
well ;  and  in  five  or  ten  minutes  he  was  back  among 
the  boys,  a  hero  of  such  moral  grandeur  as  would  be 
hard  to  describe.  Not  one  of  the  fellows  saw  him 
as  he  really  was  —  a  little  lying,  thievish  scoundrel. 
Not  even  my  boy  saw  him  so,  though  he  had  on  some 
other  point  of  personal  honesty  the  most  fantastic 
scruples. 

The  boys  liked  to  be  at  the  circus  early  so  as  to 


100  A   BOY5S   TOWK. 

make  sure  of  the  grand  entry  of  the  performers  into 
the  ring,  where  they  caracoled  round  on  horseback,  and 
gave  a  delicious  foretaste  of  the  wonders  to  come.  The 
fellows  were  united  in  this,  but  upon  other  matters  feel- 
ing varied — some  liked  tumbling  best ;  some  the  slack- 
rope  ;  some  bare-back  riding  ;  some  the  feats  of  tossing 
knives  and  balls  and  catching  them.  There  never  was 
more  than  one  ring  in  those  days ;  and  you  were  not 
tempted  to  break  your  neck  and  set  your  eyes  forever 
askew,  by  trying  to  watch  all  the  things  that  went  on  at 
once  in  two  or  three  rings.  The  boys  did  not  miss  the 
smallest  feats  of  any  performance,  and  they  enjoyed  them 
every  one,  not  equally,  but  fully.  They  had  their  pref- 
erences, of  course,  as  I  have  hinted ;  and  one  of  the 
most  popular  acts  was  that  where  a  horse  has  been 
trained  to  misbehave,  so  that  nobody  can  mount  him ; 
and  after  the  actors  have  tried  him,  the  ring-master 
turns  to  the  audience,  and  asks  if  some  gentleman  among 
them  wants  to  try  it.  Nobody  stirs,  till  at  last  a  tipsy 
country-jake  is  seen  making  his  way  down  from  one  of 
the  top-seats  towards  the  ring.  He  can  hardly  walk,  he 
is  so  drunk,  and  the  clown  has  to  help  him  across  the 
ring-board,  and  even  then  he  trips  and  rolls  over  on  the 
sawdust,  and  has  to  be  pulled  to  his  feet.  "When  they 
bring  him  up  to  the  horse,  he  falls  against  it ;  and  the 
little  fellows  think  he  will  certainly  get  killed.  But  the 
big  boys  tell  the  little  fellows  to  shut  up  and  watch  out. 
The  ring-master  and  the  clown  manage  to  get  the  coun- 
try-jake on  to  the  broad  platform  on  the  horse's  back, 
and  then  the  ring-master  cracks  his  whip,  and  the  two 
supes  who  have  been  holding  the  horse's  head  let  go, 
and  the  horse  begins  cantering  round  the  ring.  The 
little  fellows  are  just  sure  the  country-jake  is  going  to 


CIRCUSES   AND   SHOWS.  101 

fall  off,  he  reels  and  totters  so ;  but  the  big  boys  tell 
them  to  keep  watching  out ;  and  pretty  soon  the  coun- 
try-jake begins  to  straighten  up.  He  begins  to  unbot- 
ton  his  long  gray  overcoat,  and  then  he  takes  it  off  and 
throws  it  into  the  ring,  where  one  of  the  supes  catches 
it.  Then  he  sticks  a  short  pipe  into  his  mouth,  and 
pulls  on  an  old  wool  hat,  and  flourishes  a  stick  that  the 
supe  throws  to  him,  and  you  see  that  he  is  an  Irishman 
just  come  across  the  sea ;  and  then  off  goes  another 
coat,  and  he  comes  out  a  British  soldier  in  white  duck 
trousers  and  red  coat.  That  comes  off,  and  he  is  an 
American  sailor,  with  his  hands  on  his  hips  dancing  a 
hornpipe.  Suddenly  away  flash  wig  and  beard  and  false- 
face,  the  pantaloons  are  stripped  off  with  the  same  move- 
ment, the  actor  stoops  for  the  reins  lying  on  the  horse's 
neck,  and  James  Eivers,  the  greatest  three-horse  rider 
in  the  world  nimbly  capers  on  the  broad  pad,  and  kisses 
his  hand  to  the  shouting  and  cheering  spectators  as  he 
dashes  from  the  ring  past  the  braying  and  bellowing 
brass-band  into  the  dressing-room  ! 

The  big  boys  have  known  all  along  that  he  was  not  a 
real  country-jake ;  but  when  the  trained  mule  begins, 
and  shakes  everybody  off,  just  like  the  horse,  and  an- 
other country-jake  gets  up,  and  offers  to  bet  that  he  can 
ride  that  mule,  nobody  can  tell  whether  he  is  a  real 
country-jake  or  not.  This  is  always  the  last  thing  in 
the  performance,  and  the  boys  have  seen  with  heavy 
hearts  many  signs  openly  betokening  the  end  which 
they  knew  was  at  hand.  The  actors  have  come  out  of 
the  dressing-room  door,  some  in  their  everyday  clothes, 
and  some  with  just  overcoats  on  over  their  circus-dresses, 
and  they  lounge  about  near  the  band-stand  watching  the 
performance  in  the  ring.     Some  of  the  people  are  already 


102  A  boy's  town. 

getting  up  to  go  out,  and  stand  for  this  last  act,  and  will 
not  mind  the  shouts  of  "  Down  in  front !  Down  there  !" 
which  the  boys  eagerly  join  in,  to  eke  out  their  bliss 
a  little  longer  by  keeping  away  even  the  appearance 
of  anything  transitory  in  it.  The  country-jake  comes 
stumbling  awkwardly  into  the  ring,  but  he  is  perfectly 
sober,  and  he  boldly  leaps  astride  the  mule,  which  tries 
all  its  arts  to  shake  him  off,  plunging,  kicking,  rearing. 
He  sticks  on,  and  everybody  cheers  him,  and  the  owner 
of  the  mule  begins  to  get  mad  and  to  make  it  do  more 
things  to  shake  the  country-jake  off.  At  last,  with  one 
convulsive  spring,  it  flings  him  from  its  back,  and  dash- 
es into  the  dressing-room,  while  the  country-jake  picks 
himself  up  and  vanishes  among  the  crowd. 

A  man  mounted  on  a  platform  in  the  ring  is  im- 
ploring the  ladies  and  gentlemen  to  keep  their  seats, 
and  to  buy  tickets  for  the  negro-minstrel  entertainment 
which  is  to  follow,  but  which  is  not  included  in  the 
price  of  admission.  The  boys  would  like  to  stay,  but 
they  have  not  the  money,  and  they  go  out  clamoring 
over  the  performance,  and  trying  to  decide  which  was 
the  best  feat.  As  to  which  was  the  best  actor,  there 
is  never  any  question ;  it  is  the  clown,  who  showed  by 
the  way  he  turned  a  double  somersault  that  he  can  do 
anything,  and  who  chooses  to  be  clown  simply  because 
he  is  too  great  a  creature  to  enter  into  rivalry  with  the 
other  actors. 

There  will  be  another  performance  in  the  evening, 
with  real  fights  outside  between  the  circus-men  and  the 
country-jakes,  and  perhaps  some  of  the  Basin  round- 
ers, but  the  boys  do  not  expect  to  come  ;  that  would 
be  too  much.  The  boy's  brother  once  stayed  away  in 
the  afternoon,  and  went  at  night  with  one  of  the  jour 


0IK0U8ES   AND   SHOWS.  103 

printers ;  but  he  was  not  able  to  report  tbat  the  show 
was  better  than  it  was  in  the  afternoon.  He  did  not 
get  home  till  nearly  ten  o'clock,  though,  and  he  saw 
the  sides  of  the  tent  dropped  before  the  people  got 
out ;  that  was  a  great  thing ;  and  what  was  greater  yet, 
and  reflected  a  kind  of  splendor  on  the  boy  at  second 
hand,  was  that  the  jour  printer  and  the  clown  turned 
out  to  be  old  friends.  After  the  circus,  the  boy  actu- 
ally saw  them  standing  near  the  centre-pole  talking  to- 
gether ;  and  the  next  day  the  jour  showed  the  grease 
that  had  dripped  on  his  coat  from  the  candles.  Other- 
wise the  boy  might  have  thought  it  was  a  dream,  that 
some  one  he  knew  had  talked  on  equal  terms  with  the 
clown.  The  boys  were  always  intending  to  stay  up  and 
see  the  circus  go  out  of  town,  and  they  would  have  done 
so,  but  their  mothers  would  not  let  them.  This  may 
have  been  one  reason  why  none  of  them  ever  ran  off 
with  a  circus. 

As  soon  as  a  circus  had  been  in  town,  the  boys  began 
to  have  circuses  of  their  own,  and  to  practise  for  them. 
Everywhere  you  could  see  boys  upside  down,  walking 
on  their  hands  or  standing  on  them  with  their  legs 
dangling  over,  or  stayed  against  house  walls.  It  was 
easy  to  stand  on  your  head  ;  one  boy  stood  on  his  head 
so  much  that  he  had  to  have  it  shaved,  in  the  brain 
fever  that  he  got  from  standing  on  it ;  but  that  did  not 
stop  the  other  fellows.  Another  boy  fell  head  downwards 
from  a  rail  where  he  was  skinning-the-cat,  and  nearly 
broke  his  neck,  and  made  it  so  sore  that  it  was  stiff 
ever  so  long.  Another  boy,  who  was  playing  Samson, 
almost  had  his  leg  torn  off  by  the  fellows  that  were 
pulling  at  it  with  a  hook ;  and  he  did  have  the  leg 
of  his  pantaloons  torn  off.     Nothing  could  stop  the 


104  A   BOY'S   TOWN". 

boys  but  time,  or  some  other  play  coming  in ;  and  cir- 
cuses lasted  a  good  while.  Some  of  the  boys  learned 
to  turn  hand-springs ;  anybody  could  turn  cart-wheels ; 
one  fellow,  across  the  river,  could  just  run  along  and 
throw  a  somersault  and  light  on  his  feet ;  lots  of  fellows 
could  light  on  their  backs ;  but  if  you  had  a  spring- 
board, or  shavings  under  a  bank,  like  those  by  the  turn- 
ing-shop, you  could  practise  for  somersaults  pretty 
safely. 

All  the  time  you  were  practising  you  were  forming 
your  circus  company.  The  great  trouble  was  not  that 
any  boy  minded  paying  five  or  ten  pins  to  come  in,  but 
that  so  many  fellows  wanted  to  belong  there  were  hardly 
any  left  to  form  an  audience.  You  could  get  girls,  but 
even  as  spectators  girls  were  a  little  too  despicable  ; 
they  did  not  know  anything ;  they  had  no  sense ;  if  a 
fellow  got  hurt  they  cried.  Then  another  thing  was, 
where  to  have  the  circus.  Of  course  it  was  simply 
hopeless  to  think  of  a  tent,  and  a  boy's  circus  was  very 
glad  to  get  a  barn.  The  boy  whose  father  owned  the 
barn  had  to  get  it  for  the  circus  without  his  fathei 
knowing  it ;  and  just  as  likely  as  not  his  mother  would 
hear  the  noise  and  come  out  and  break  the  whole  thing 
up  while  you  were  in  the  very  middle  of  it.  Then 
there  were  all  sorts  of  anxieties  and  perplexities  about 
the  dress.  You  could  do  something  by  turning  your 
roundabout  inside  out,  and  rolling  your  trousers  up  as 
far  as  they  would  go  ;  but  what  a  fellow  wanted  to  make 
him  a  real  circus  actor  was  a  long  pair  of  Avhite  cotton 
stockings,  and  I  never  knew  a  fellow  that  got  a  pair ;  I 
heard  of  many  a  fellow  who  was  said  to  have  got  a  pair ; 
but  when  you  came  down  to  the  fact,  they  vanished 
like  ghosts  when  you  try  to  verify  them.     I  believe  the 


CIRCUSES   AND   SHOWS.  105 

fellows  always  expected  to  get  them  out  of  a  bureau- 
drawer  or  the  clothes-line  at  home,  but  failed.  In  most 
other  ways,  a  boy's  circus  was  always  a  failure,  like 
most  other  things  boys  undertake.  They  usually  broke 
up  under  the  strain  of  rivalry ;  everybody  wanted  to 
be  the  clown  or  ring-master ;  or  else  the  boy  they  got 
the  barn  of  behaved  badly,  and  went  into  the  house 
crying,  and  all  the  fellows  had  to  run. 

There  were  only  two  kinds  of  show  known  by  that 
name  in  the  Boy's  Town  :  a  Nigger  Show,  or  a  perform- 
ance of  burnt-cork  minstrels ;  and  an  Animal  Show,  or 
a  strolling  menagerie ;  and  the  boys  always  meant  a 
menagerie  when  they  spoke  of  a  show,  unless  they  said 
just  what  sort  of  show.  The  only  perfect  joy  on  earth 
in  the  way  of  an  entertainment,  of  course,  was  a  circus, 
but  after  the  circus  the  show  came  unquestionably  next. 
It  made  a  processional  entry  into  the  town  almost  as 
impressive  as  the  circus's,  and  the  boys  went  out  to 
meet  it  beyond  the  corporation  line  in  the  same  way. 
It  always  had  two  elephants,  at  least,  and  four  or  five 
camels,  and  sometimes  there  was  a  giraffe.  These  headed 
the  procession,  the  elephants  in  the  very  front,  with 
their  keepers  at  their  heads,  and  then  the  camels  led 
by  halters  dangling  from  their  sneering  lips  and  con- 
temptuous noses.  After  these  began  to  come  the  show- 
wagons,  with  pictures  on  their  sides,  very  flattered  por- 
traits of  the  wild  beasts  and  birds  inside ;  lions  first, 
then  tigers  (never  meaner  than  Royal  Bengal  ones,  which 
the  boys  understood  to  be  a  superior  breed),  then  leop- 
ards, then  pumas  and  panthers  ;  then  bears,  then  jackals 
and  hyenas ;  then  bears  and  wolves ;  then  kangaroos, 
musk-oxen,  deer,  and  such  harmless  cattle  ;  and  then  os- 
triches, emus,  lyre-birds,  birds-of -Paradise  and  all  the  rest. 


106  A   BOY'S   TOWN. 

From  time  to  time  the  boys  ran  back  from  the  elephants 
and  camels  to  get  "what  good  they  could  out  of  the 
scenes  in  which  these  hidden  wonders  were  dramatized 
in  acts  of  rapine  or  the  chase,  but  they  always  came 
forward  to  the  elephants  and  camels  again.  Even  with 
them  they  had  to  endure  a  degree  of  denial,  for  although 
you  could  see  most  of  the  camels'  figures,  the  elephants 
were  so  heavily  draped  that  it  was  a  kind  of  disap- 
pointment to  look  at  them.  The  boys  kept  as  close  as 
they  could,  and  came  as  near  getting  under  the  ele- 
phants' feet  as  the  keepers  would  allow ;  but,  after  all, 
they  were  driven  off  a  good  deal  and  had  to  keep  steal- 
ing back.  They  gave  the  elephants  apples  and  bits  of 
cracker  and  cake,  and  some  tried  to  put  tobacco  into 
their  trunks ;  though  they  knew  very  well  that  it  was 
nearly  certain  death  to  do  so ;  for  any  elephant  that 
was  deceived  that  way  would  recognize  the  boy  that 
did  it,  and  kill  him  the  next  time  he  came,  if  it  was 
twenty  years  afterwards.  The  boys  used  to  believe 
that  the  Miami  bridge  would  break  down  under  the 
elephants  if  they  tried  to  cross  it,  and  they  would  have 
liked  to  see  it  do  it,  but  no  one  ever  saw  it,  perhaps 
because  the  elephants  always  waded  the  river.  Some 
boys  had  seen  them  wading  it,  and  stopping  to  drink 
and  squirt  the  water  out  of  their  trunks.  If  an  ele- 
phant got  a  boy  that  had  given  him  tobacco  into  the 
river,  he  would  squirt  water  on  him  till  he  drowned 
him.  Still,  some  boys  always  tried  to  give  the  elephants 
tobacco,  just  to  see  how  they  would  act  for  the  time 
being. 

A  show  was  not  so  much  in  favor  as  a  circus,  because 
there  was  so  little  performance  in  the  ring.  You  could 
go  round  and  look  at  the  animals,  mostly  very  sleepy 


CIRCUSES   AND   SHOWS.  107 

in  their  cages,  but  you  were  not  allowed  to  poke  them 
through  the  bars,  or  anything  ;  and  when  you  took  your 
seat  there  was  nothing  much  till  Herr  Driesbach  en- 
tered the  lions'  cage,  and  began  to  make  them  jump 
over  his  whip.  It  was  some  pleasure  to  see  him  put 
his  head  between  the  jaws  of  the  great  African  King 
of  Beasts,  but  the  lion  never  did  anything  to  him,  and 
so  the  act  wanted  a  true  dramatic  climax.  The  boys 
would  really  rather  have  seen  a  bare-back  rider,  like 
James  Rivers,  turn  a  back-somersault  and  light  on  his 
horse's  crupper,  any  time,  though  they  respected  Herr 
Driesbach,  too ;  they  did  not  care  much  for  a  woman 
who  once  went  into  the  lions'  cage  and  made  them 
jump  round. 

If  you  had  the  courage  you  could  go  up  the  ladder 
into  the  curtained  tower  on  the  elephant's  back,  and 
ride  round  the  ring  with  some  of  the  other  fellows ; 
but  my  boy  at  least  never  had  the  courage ;  and  he 
never  was  of  those  who  mounted  the  trick  pony  and 
were  shaken  off  as  soon  as  they  got  on.  It  seemed  to 
be  a  good  deal  of  fun,  but  he  did  not  dare  to  risk  it; 
and  he  had  an  obscure  trouble  of  mind  when,  the  last 
thing,  four  or  five  ponies  were  brought  out  with  as  many 
monkeys  tied  on  their  backs,  and  set  to  run  a  race 
round  the  ring.  The  monkeys  always  looked  very  mis- 
erable, and  even  the  one  who  won  the  race,  and  rode 
round  afterwards  with  an  American  flag  in  his  hand  and 
his  cap  very  much  cocked  over  his  left  eye,  did  not 
seem  to  cheer  up  any. 

The  boys  had  their  own  beliefs  about  the  different 
animals,  and  one  of  these  concerned  the  inappeasable 
ferocity  of  the  zebra.  I  do  not  know  why  the  zebra 
should  have  had  this  repute,  for  he  certainly  never  did 


108  A   BOY'S   TOWN. 

anything  to  deserve  it ;  but,  for  the  matter  of  that,  he 
was  like  all  the  other  animals.  Bears  were  not  much 
esteemed,  but  they  would  have  been  if  they  could  have 
been  really  seen  hugging  anybody  to  death.  It  was 
always  hoped  that  some  of  the  fiercest  animals  would 
get  away  and  have  to  be  hunted  down,  and  retaken 
after  they  had  killed  a  lot  of  dogs.  If  the  elephants, 
some  of  them,  had  gone  crazy,  it  would  have  been  some- 
thing, for  then  they  would  have  roamed  up  and  down 
the  turnpike  smashing  buggies  and  wagons,  and  had  to 
be  shot  with  the  six-pound  cannon  that  was  used  to 
celebrate  the  Fourth  of  July  with. 

Another  thing  that  was  against  the  show  was  that 
the  animals  were  fed  after  it  was  out,  and  you  could 
not  see  the  tigers  tearing  their  prey  when  the  great 
lumps  of  beef  were  thrown  them.  There  was  somehow 
not  so  much  chance  of  hooking  into  a  show  as  a  circus, 
because  the  seats  did  not  go  all  round,  and  you  could 
be  seen  under  the  cages  as  soon  as  you  got  in  under 
the  canvas.  I  never  heard  of  a  boy  that  hooked  into  a 
show  ;  perhaps  nobody  ever  tried. 

A  show  had  the  same  kind  of  smell  as  a  circus,  up 
to  a  certain  point,  and  then  its  smell  began  to  be  differ- 
ent. Both  smelt  of  tan-bark  or  saw-dust  and  trodden 
grass,  and  both  smelt  of  lemonade  and  cigars ;  but  after 
that  a  show  had  its  own  smell  of  animals.  I  have  found 
in  later  life  that  this  is  a  very  offensive  smell  on  a  hot 
day  ;  but  I  do  not  believe  a  boy  ever  thinks  so ;  for 
him  it  is  just  a  different  smell  from  a  circus  smell. 
There  were  two  other  reasons  why  a  show  was  not  as 
much  fun  as  a  circus,  and  one  was  that  it  was  thought 
instructive,  and  fellows  went  who  were  not  allowed  to 
go  to  circuses.     But  the  great  reason  of  all  was  that 


CIKCUSES   AND   SHOWS. 


109 


you  could  not  have  an  animal  show  of  your  own  as  you 
could  a  circus.  You  could  not  get  the  animals ;  and 
no  boy  living  could  act  a  camel,  or  a  Royal  Bengal  tiger, 
or  an  elephant  so  as  to  look  the  least  like  one. 

Of  course  you  could  have  negro  shows,  and  the  boys 
often  had  them ;  but  they  were  not  much  fun,  and  you 
were  always  getting  the  biack  on  your  shirt-sleeves. 


AJ;.-  - ' 


THE  CIRCUS. 


HIGHDAYS    AND    HOLIDAYS. 

The  greatest  day  of  all  in  the  Boy's  Town  was  Christ- 
mas. In  that  part  of  the  West  the  boys  had  never  even 
heard  of  Thanksgiving,  and  their  elders  knew  of  it  only 
as  a  festival  of  far-off  New  England.  Christmas  was 
the  day  that  was  kept  in  all  churches  and  families, 
whether  they  were  Methodists  or  Episcopalians,  Bap- 
tists or  Universalists,  Catholics  or  Protestants ;  and 
among  boys  of  whatever  persuasion  it  was  kept  in  a 
fashion  that  I  suppose  may  have  survived  from  the 
early  pioneer  times,  when  the  means  of  expressing  joy 
were  few  and  primitive.  On  Christmas  eve,  before  the 
church-bells  began  to  ring  in  the  day,  the  boys  began 
to  celebrate  it  with  guns  and  pistols,  with  shooting- 
crackers  and  torpedoes ;  and  they  never  stopped  as 
long  as  their  ammunition  lasted.  A  fellow  hardly  ever 
had  more  than  a  bit  to  spend,  and  after  he  had  paid  ten 
cents  for  a  pack  of  crackers,  he  had  only  two  cents  and 
a  half  for  powder  ;  and  if  he  wanted  his  pleasure  to  last, 
he  had  to  be  careful.  Of  course  he  wanted  his  pleasure 
to  last,  but  he  would  rather  have  had  no  pleasure  at  all 
than  be  careful,  and  most  of  the  boys  woke  Christmas 
morning  empty-handed,  unless  they  had  burst  their  pis- 
tols the  night  before  ;  then  they  had  a  little  powder  left, 
and  could  go  pretty  well  into  the  forenoon  if  they  could 
find  some  other  boy  who  had  shot  off  his  powder  but 


' "  THE    BOYS     BEGAN    TO     CELEBRATE     IT    WITH    GUNS    AND 
PISTOLS. " 


HIGHDATS   AND    HOLIDAYS.  Ill 

had  a  whole  pistol  left.  Lots  of  fellows'  pistols  got  out 
of  order  without  bursting,  and  that  saved  powder  ;  but 
generally  a  fellow  kept  putting  in  bigger  and  bigger 
loads  till  his  pistol  blew  to  pieces.  There  were  all  sorts 
of  pistols ;  but  the  commonest  was  one  that  the  boys 
called  a  Christmas-crack ;  it  was  of  brass,  and  when  it 
burst  the  barrel  curled  up  like  a  dandelion  stem  when 
you  split  it  and  put  it  in  water.  A  Christmas-crack  in 
that  shape  was  a  trophy ;  but  of  course  the  little  boys 
did  not  have  pistols  ;  they  had  to  put  up  with  shooting- 
crackers,  or  maybe  just  torpedoes.  Even  then  the  big 
boys  would  get  to  fire  them  off  on  one  pretext  or  an- 
other. Some  fellows  would  hold  a  cracker  in  their 
hands  till  it  exploded ;  nearly  everybody  had  burned 
thumbs,  and  some  of  the  boys  had  their  faces  blackened 
with  powder.  Now  and  then  a  fellow  who  was  nearly 
grown  up  would  set  off  a  whole  pack  of  crackers  in  a 
barrel ;  it  seemed  almost  incredible  to  the  little  boys. 

It  was  glorious,  and  I  do  not  think  any  of  the  boys 
felt  that  there  was  anything  out  of  keeping  in  their 
way  of  celebrating  the  day,  for  I  do  not  think  they  knew 
why  they  were  celebrating  it,  or,  if  they  knew,  they 
never  thought.  It  was  simply  a  holiday,  and  was  to  be 
treated  like  a  holiday.  After  all,  perhaps  there  are  just 
as  strange  things  done  by  grown  people  in  honor  of  the 
loving  and  lowly  Saviour  of  Men ;  but  we  will  not  en- 
ter upon  that  question.  When  they  had  burst  their 
pistols  or  fired  off  their  crackers,  the  boys  sometimes 
huddled  into  the  back  part  of  the  Catholic  church  and 
watched  the  service,  awed  by  the  dim  altar  lights,  the 
rising  smoke  of  incense,  and  the  grimness  of  the  sac- 
ristan, an  old  German,  who  stood  near  to  keep  order 
among  them.     They  knew  the  fellows  who  were  help- 


112  A  boy's  town. 

ing  the  priest ;  one  of  them  was  the  boy  who  stood  on 
his  head  till  he  had  to  have  it  shaved ;  they  would 
have  liked  to  mock  him  then  and  there  for  wearing  a 
petticoat,  and  most  of  them  had  the  bitterest  scorn  and 
hate  for  Catholics  in  their  hearts ;  but  they  were  afraid 
of  the  sacristan,  and  they  behaved  very  well  as  long  as 
they  were  in  the  church ;  but  as  soon  as  they  got  out 
they  whooped  and  yelled,  and  stoned  the  sacristan  when 
he  ran  after  them. 

My  boy  would  have  liked  to  do  all  that  too,  just  to 
be  with  the  crowd,  but  at  home  he  had  been  taught  to 
believe  that  Catholics  were  as  good  as  anybody,  and  that 
you  must  respect  everybody's  religion.  His  father  and 
the  priest  were  friendly  acquaintances,  and  in  a  dim  way 
he  knew  that  his  father  had  sometimes  taken  the  Cath- 
olics' part  in  his  paper  when  the  prejudice  against  for- 
eigners ran  high.  He  liked  to  go  to  the  Catholic  church, 
though  he  was  afraid  of  the  painted  figure  that  hung 
full  length  on  the  wooden  crucifix,  with  the  blood-drops 
under  the  thorns  on  its  forehead,  and  the  red  wound  in 
its  side.  He  was  afraid  of  it  as  something  both  dead 
and  alive ;  he  could  not  keep  his  eyes  away  from  the 
awful,  beautiful,  suffering  face,  and  the  body  that  seemed 
to  twist  in  agony,  and  the  hands  and  feet  so  cruelly 
nailed  to  the  cross. 

But  he  never  connected  the  thought  of  that  anguish 
with  Christmas.  His  head  was  too  full  of  St.  Nicholas, 
who  came  down  the  chimney,  and  filled  your  stockings  ; 
the  day  belonged  to  St.  Nicholas.  The  first  thing  when 
you  woke  you  tried  to  catch  everybody,  and  you  caught 
a  person  if  you  said  "  Christmas  Gift !"  before  he  or  she 
did ;  and  then  the  person  you  caught  had  to  give  you 
a  present.     Nobody  ever  said  "  Merry  Christmas !"  as 


HIGHDAYS    AND    HOLIDAYS.  113 

people  do  now  ;  and  I  do  not  know  where  the  custom  of 
saying  "  Christmas  Gift "  came  from.  It  seems  more 
sordid  and  greedy  than  it  really  was  ;  the  pleasure  was 
to  see  who  could  say  it  first ;  and  the  boys  did  not  care 
for  what  they  got  if  they  heat,  any  more  than  they  cared 
for  what  they  won  in  fighting  eggs  at  Easter. 

At  New-Year's  the  great  thing  was  to  sit  up  and  watch 
the  old  year  out ;  but  the  little  boys  could  not  have 
kept  awake  even  if  their  mothers  had  let  them.  In  some 
families,  perhaps  of  Dutch  origin,  the  day  was  kept 
instead  of  Christmas,  but  for  most  of  the  fellows  it  was 
a  dull  time.  You  had  spent  all  your  money  at  Christ- 
mas, and  very  likely  burst  your  pistol,  anyway.  It  was 
some  consolation  to  be  out  of  school,  which  did  not 
keep  on  New-Year's ;  and  if  it  was  cold  you  could  have 
fires  on  the  ice  ;  or,  anyway,  you  could  have  fires  on  the 
river-bank,  or  down  by  the  shore,  where  there  was  al- 
ways plenty  of  drift-wood. 

But  New -Year's  could  not  begin  to  compare  with 
Easter.  All  the  boys'  mothers  colored  eggs  for  them 
at  Easter  ;  I  do  not  believe  there  was  a  mother  in  the 
Boy's  Town  mean  enough  not  to.  By  Easter  Day,  in 
that  Southern  region,  the  new  grass  was  well  started, 
and  grass  gave  a  beautiful  yellow  color  to  the  eggs 
boiled  with  it.  Onions  colored  them  a  soft,  pale  green, 
and  logwood,  black ;  but  the  most  esteemed  egg  of  all 
was  a  calico-egg.  You  got  a  piece  of  new  calico  from 
your  mother,  or  maybe  some  of  your  aunts,  and  you 
got  somebody  (most  likely  your  grandmother,  if  she  was 
on  a  visit  at  the  time)  to  sew  an  egg  up  in  it ;  and 
when  the  egg  was  boiled  it  came  out  all  over  the  pat- 
tern of  the  calico.  My  boy's  brother  once  had  a  calico- 
egg  that  seemed  to  my  boy  a  more  beautiful  piece  of 


114  A   BOY'S   TOWN. 

color  than  any  Titian  he  has  seen  since ;  it  was  kept  in 
a  bureau-drawer  till  nobody  could  stand  the  smell.  But 
most  Easter  eggs  never  outlasted  Easter  Day.  As  soon 
as  the  fellows  were  done  breakfast  they  ran  out  of  the 
house  and  began  to  fight  eggs  with  the  other  fellows. 
They  struck  the  little  ends  of  the  eggs  together,  and  if 
your  egg  broke  another  fellow's  egg,  then  you  had  a 
right  to  it.  Sometimes  an  egg  was  so  hard  that  it  would 
break  every  other  egg  in  the  street;  and  generally  when 
a  little  fellow  lost  his  egg,  he  began  to  cry  and  went 
into  the  house.  This  did  not  prove  him  a  cry-baby  : 
it  was  allowable,  like  crying  when  you  stumped  your 
toe.  I  think  this  custom  of  fighting  eggs  came  from 
the  Pennsylvania  Germans,  to  whom  the  Boy's  Town 
probably  owed  its  Protestant  observance  of  Easter. 
There  was  nothing  religious  in  the  way  the  boys  kept 
it,  any  more  than  there  was  in  their  way  of  keeping 
Christmas. 

I  do  not  think  they  distinguished  between  it  and  All- 
Fool's  Day  in  character  or  dignity.  About  the  best 
thing  you  could  do  then  was  to  write  April  Fool  on 
a  piece  of  paper  and  pin  it  to  a  fellow's  back,  or  may- 
be a  girl's,  if  she  was  a  big  girl,  and  stuck-up,  or  any- 
thing. I  do  not  suppose  there  is  a  boy  now  living  who 
is  silly  enough  to  play  this  trick  on  anybody,  or  mean 
enough  to  fill  an  old  hat  with  rocks  and  brickbats,  and 
dare  a  fellow  to  kick  it ;  but  in  the  Boy's  Town  there 
were  some  boys  who  did  this ;  and  then  the  fellow  had 
to  kick  the  hat,  or  else  come  under  the  shame  of  having 
taken  a  dare.  Most  of  the  April-foolings  were  harm- 
less enough,  like  saying,  "  Oh,  see  that  flock  of  wild- 
geese  flying  over  !"  and  "  What  have  you  got  on  the  back 
of  your  coat !"  and  holloing  "  April  Fool !"  as  soon  as 


HIGHDAY8   AND   H0LEDAY8.  115 

the  person  did  it.  Sometimes  a  crowd  of  boys  got  a 
bit  with  a  hole  in  it,  and  tied  a  string  in  it,  and  laid  it 
on  the  sidewalk,  and  then  hid  in  a  cellar,  and  when 
anybody  stooped  to  pick  it  up,  they  pulled  it  in.  That 
was  the  greatest  fun,  especially  if  the  person  was  stingy ; 
but  the  difficulty  was  to  get  the  bit,  whether  it  had  a 
hole  in  it  or  not. 

From  the  first  of  April  till  the  first  of  May  was  a  long 
stretch  of  days,  and  you  never  heard  any  one  talk  about 
a  May  Party  till  April  Fool  was  over.  Then  there  al- 
ways began  to  be  talk  of  a  May  Party,  and  who  was 
going  to  be  invited.  It  was  the  big  girls  that  always 
intended  to  have  it,  and  it  was  understood  at  once  who 
was  going  to  be  the  Queen.  At  least  the  boys  had  no 
question,  for  there  was  one  girl  in  every  school  whom 
all  the  boys  felt  to  be  the  most  beautiful ;  but  proba- 
bly there  was  a  good  deal  of  rivalry  and  heart-burning 
among  the  girls  themselves.  Very  likely  it  was  this 
that  kept  a  May  Party  from  hardly  ever  coming  to  any- 
thing but  the  talk.  Besides  the  Queen,  there  were  cer- 
tain little  girls  who  were  to  be  Lambs ;  I  think  there 
were  Maids  of  Honor,  too ;  but  I  am  not  sure.  The 
Lambs  had  to  keep  very  close  to  the  Queen's  person, 
and  to  wait  upon  her ;  and  there  were  boys  who  had 
to  hold  the  tassels  of  the  banners  which  the  big  boys 
carried.  These  boys  had  to  wear  white  pantaloons,  and 
shoes  and  stockings,  and  very  likely  gloves,  and  to  suf- 
fer the  jeers  of  the  other  fellows  who  were  not  in  the 
procession.  The  May  Party  was  a  girl's  affair  altogether, 
though  the  boys  were  expected  to  help ;  and  so  there 
were  distinctions  made  that  the  boys  never  dreamed 
of  in  their  rude  republic,  where  one  fellow  was  as  good 
as  another,  and  the  lowest-down  boy  in  town  could  make 


116  A    BOY'S   TOWN. 

himself  master  if  he  was  bold  and  strong  enough.  The 
boys  did  not  understand  those  distinctions,  and  noth- 
ing of  them  remained  in  their  minds  after  the  moment; 
but  the  girls  understood  them,  and  probably  they  were 
taught  at  home  to  feel  the  difference  between  themselves 
and  other  girls,  and  to  believe  themselves  of  finer  clay. 
At  any  rate,  the  May  Party  was  apt  to  be  poisoned  at 
its  source  by  questions  of  class;  and  I  think  it  might 
have  been  in  the  talk  about  precedence,  and  who  should 
be  what,  that  my  boy  first  heard  that  such  and  such  a 
girl's  father  was  a  mechanic,  and  that  it  was  somehow 
dishonorable  to  be  a  mechanic.  He  did  not  know  why, 
and  he  has  never  since  known  why,  but  the  girls  then 
knew  why,  and  the  women  seem  to  know  now.  He  was 
asked  to  be  one  of  the  boys  who  held  the  banner- 
tassels,  and  he  felt  this  a  great  compliment  somehow, 
though  he  was  so  young  that  he  had  afterwards  only 
the  vaguest  remembrance  of  marching  in  the  proces- 
sion, and  going  to  a  raw  and  chilly  grove  somewhere, 
and  having  untimely  lemonade  and  cake.  Yet  these 
might  have  been  the  associations  of  some  wholly  differ- 
ent occasion. 

No  aristocratic  reserves  marred  the  glory  of  Fourth 
of  July.  My  boy  was  quite  a  well-grown  boy  before 
he  noticed  that  there  were  ever  any  clouds  in  the  sky 
except  when  it  was  going  to  rain.  At  all  other  times, 
especially  in  summer,  it  seemed  to  him  that  the  sky  was 
perfectly  blue,  from  horizon  to  horizon ;  and  it  certain- 
ly was  so  on  the  Fourth  of  July.  He  usually  got  up 
pretty  early,  and  began  firing  off  torpedoes  and  shoot- 
ing-crackers, just  as  at  Christmas.  Everybody  in  town 
had  been  wakened  by  the  salutes  fired  from  the  six- 
pounder  on  the  river-bank,  and  by  the  noise  of  guns 


HIGHDAYS    AND    HOLIDAYS. 


Ill 


and  pistols ;  and  right  after  breakfast  you  heard  that 
the  Butler  Guards  were  out,  and  you  ran  up  to  the 
court-house  yard  with  the  other  fellows  to  see  if  it  was 
true.  It  was  not  true,  just  yet,  perhaps,  but  it  came 
true  during  the  forenoon,  and  in  the  meantime  the 
court-house  yard  was  a  scene  of  festive  preparation. 
There  was  going  to  be  an  oration  and  a  public  dinner, 
and  they  were  already  setting  the  tables  under  the  lo- 
cust-trees. There  may  have  been  some  charge  for  this 
dinner,  but  the  boys  never  knew  of  that,  or  had  any 
question  of  the  bounty  that  seemed  free  as  the  air  of 
the  summer  day. 

High  Street  was  thronged  with  people,  mostly  coun- 
try-jakes  who  had  come  to  town  with  their  wagons  and 
buggies  for  the  celebration.  The  young  fellows  and 
their  girls  were  walking  along  hand  in  hand,  eating 
gingerbread,  and  here  and  there  a  farmer  had  already 
begun  his  spree,  and  was  whooping  up  and  down  the 
sidewalk  unmolested  by  authority.  The  boys  did  not 
think  it  at  all  out  of  the  way  for  him  to  be  in  that 
state;  they  took  it  as  they  took  the  preparations 
for  the  public  dinner,  and  no  sense  of  the  shame 
and  sorrow  it  meant  penetrated  their  tough  igno- 
rance of  life.  He  interested  them  because,  after  the 
regular  town  drunkards,  he  was  a  novelty ;  but,  other- 
wise, he  did  not  move  them.  By  and  by  they  would 
see  him  taken  charge  of  by  his  friends  and  more  or  less 
brought  under  control ;  though  if  you  had  the  time  to 
follow  him  up  you  could  see  him  wanting  to  fight  his 
friends  and  trying  to  get  away  from  them.  Whiskey 
was  freely  made  and  sold  and  drunk  in  that  time  and 
that  region  ;  but  it  must  not  be  imagined  that  there  was 
no  struggle  against  intemperance,     The  boys  did  not 


118  A   BOY'S    TOWN. 

know  it,  but  there  was  a  very  strenuous  fight  in  the 
community  against  the  drunkenness  that  was  so  fre- 
quent ;  and  there  were  perhaps  more  people  who  were 
wholly  abstinent  then  than  there  are  now.  The  forces 
of  good  and  evil  were  more  openly  arrayed  against  each 
other  among  people  whose  passions  were  strong  and 
still  somewhat  primitive  ;  and  those  who  touched  not, 
tasted  not,  handled  not,  far  outnumbered  those  who 
looked  upon  the  wine  when  it  was  red.  The  pity  for 
the  boys  was  that  they  saw  the  drunkards  every  day, 
and  the  temperance  men  only  now  and  then ;  and  out 
of  the  group  of  boys  who  were  my  boy's  friends,  many 
kindly  fellows  came  to  know  how  strong  drink  could 
rage,  how  it  could  bite  like  the  serpent,  and  sting  like 
an  adder. 

But  the  temperance  men  made  a  show  on  the  Fourth 
of  July  as  well  as  the  drunkards,  and  the  Sons  of  Tem- 
perance walked  in  the  procession  with  the  Masons  and 
the  Odd-Fellows.  Sometimes  they  got  hold  of  a  whole 
Fourth,  and  then  there  was  nothing  but  a  temperance 
picnic  in  the  Sycamore  Grove,  which  the  boys  took  part 
in  as  Sunday-school  scholars.  It  was  not  gay  ;  there  was 
no  good  reason  why  it  should  leave  the  boys  with  the 
feeling  of  having  been  cheated  out  of  their  holiday,  but 
it  did.  A  boy's  Fourth  of  July  seemed  to  end  about  four 
o'clock,  anyhow.  After  that,  he  began  to  feel  gloomy, 
no  matter  what  sort  of  a  time  he  had.  That  was  the 
way  he  felt  after  almost  any  holiday. 

Market-day  was  a  highday  in  the  Boy's  Town,  and  it 
would  be  hard  to  say  whether  it  was  more  so  in  summer 
than  in  winter.  In  summer,  the  market  opened  about  four 
or  five  o'clock  in  the  morning,  and  by  this  hour  my  boy's 
father  was  off  twice  a  week  with  his  market-basket  on  his 


HIGHDAYS   AND   HOLIDAYS.  119 

arm.  All  the  people  did  their  marketing  in  the  same 
way  ;  but  it  was  a  surprise  for  my  boy,  when  he  became 
old  enough  to  go  once  with  his  father,  to  find  the  other 
boys'  fathers  at  market  too.  He  held  on  by  his  father's 
hand,  and  ran  by  his  side  past  the  lines  of  wagons  that 
stretched  sometimes  from  the  bridge  to  the  court-house, 
in  the  dim  morning  light.  The  market-house,  where 
the  German  butchers  in  their  white  aprons  were  stand- 
ing behind  their  meat-blocks,  was  lit  up  with  candles 
in  sconces,  that  shone  upon  festoons  of  sausage  and 
cuts  of  steak  dangling  from  the  hooks  behind  them ; 
but  without,  all  was  in  a  vague  obscurity,  broken  only 
by  the  lanterns  in  the  farmers'  wagons.  There  was  a 
market-master,  who  rang  a  bell  to  open  the  market,  and 
if  anybody  bought  or  sold  anything  before  the  tap  of 
that  bell,  he  would  be  fined.  People  would  walk  along 
the  line  of  wagons,  where  the  butter  and  eggs,  apples 
and  peaches  and  melons,  were  piled  up  inside  near  the 
tail-boards,  and  stop  where  they  saw  something  they 
wanted,  and  stand  near  so  as  to  lay  hands  on  it  the 
moment  the  bell  rang.  My  boy  remembered  stopping 
that  morning  by  the  wagon  of  some  nice  old  Quaker 
ladies,  who  used  to  come  to  his  house,  and  whom  his 
father  stood  chatting  with  till  the  bell  rang.  They 
probably  had  an  understanding  with  him  about  the  rolls 
of  fragrant  butter  which  he  instantly  lifted  into  his 
basket.  But  if  you  came  long  after  the  bell  rang,  you 
had  to  take  what  you  could  get. 

There  was  a  smell  of  cantaloupes  in  the  air,  along  the 
line  of  wagons,  that  morning,  and  so  it  must  have  been 
towards  the  end  of  the  summer.  After  the  nights  be- 
gan to  lengthen  and  to  be  too  cold  for  the  farmers  to 
sleep  in  their  wagons,  as  they  did  in  summer  on  the 


120  A   BOY'S    TOWN. 

market  eves,  the  market  time  was  changed  to  midday. 
Then  it  was  fun  to  count  the  wagons  on  both  sides  of 
the  street  clear  to  where  they  frayed  off  into  wood- 
wagons,  and  to  see  the  great  heaps  of  apples  and  cab- 
bages, and  potatoes  and  turnips,  and  all  the  other 
fruits  and  vegetables  which  abounded  in  that  fertile 
country.  There  was  a  great  variety  of  poultry  for 
sale,  and  from  time  to  time  the  air  would  be  startled 
with  the  clamor  of  fowls  transferred  from  the  coops  where 
they  had  been  softly  crr-crring  in  soliloquy  to  the  hand 
of  a  purchaser  who  walked  off  with  them  and  patiently 
waited  for  their  well-grounded  alarm  to  die  away.  All 
the  time  the  market-master  was  making  his  rounds ; 
and  if  he  saw  a  pound  roll  of  butter  that  he  thought 
was  under  weight,  he  would  weigh  it  with  his  steel- 
yards, and  if  it  was  too  light  he  would  seize  it.  My 
boy  once  saw  a  confiscation  of  this  sort  with  such  ter- 
ror as  he  would  now,  perhaps,  witness  an  execution. 


XL 

MUSTERS   AND   ELECTIONS. 

The  Butler  Guards  were  the  finest  military  company 
in  the  world.  I  do  not  believe  there  was  a  fellow  in 
the  Boy's  Town  who  ever  even  tried  to  imagine  a  more 
splendid  body  of  troops :  when  they  talked  of  them,  as 
they  did  a  great  deal,  it  was  simply  to  revel  in  the  rec- 
ognition of  their  perfection.  I  forget  just  what  their 
uniform  was,  but  there  were  white  pantaloons  in  it,  and  a 
tuft  of  white-and-red  cockerel  plumes  that  almost  cov- 
ered the  front  of  the  hat,  and  swayed  when  the  soldier 
walked,  and  blew  in  the  wind.  I  think  the  coat  was 
gray,  and  the  skirts  were  buttoned  back  with  buff,  but 
I  will  not  be  sure  of  this ;  and  somehow  I  cannot  say 
how  the  officers  differed  from  the  privates  in  dress ;  it 
was  impossible  for  them  to  be  more  magnificent.  They 
walked  backwards  in  front  of  the  platoons,  with  their 
swords  drawn,  and  held  in  their  white-gloved  hands  at 
hilt  and  point,  and  kept  holloing,  "  Shoulder -r-r  — 
arms  !  Carry — arms  !  Present — arms  !"  and  then  faced 
round,  and  walked  a  few  steps  forward,  till  they  could 
think  of  something  else  to  make  the  soldiers  do. 

Every  boy  intended  to  belong  to  the  Butler  Guards 
when  he  grew  up ;  and  he  would  have  given  anything 
to  be  the  drummer  or  the  marker.  These  were  both 
boys,  and  they  were  just  as  much  dressed  up  as  the 
Guards  themselves,  only  they  had  caps  instead  of  hats 


122  A  boy's  TOWN. 

with  plumes.  It  was  strange  that  the  other  fellows 
somehow  did  not  know  who  these  boys  were ;  but  tbey 
never  knew,  or  at  least  my  boy  never  knew.  They 
thought  more  of  the  marker  than  of  the  drummer ;  for 
the  marker  carried  a  little  flag,  and  when  the  officers 
holloed  out,  "By  the  left  flank  — left!  Wheel!"  he 
set  his  flag  against  his  shoulder,  and  stood  marking 
time  with  his  feet  till  the  soldiers  all  got  by  him,  and 
then  he  ran  up  to  the  front  rank,  with  the  flag  flutter- 
ing behind  him.  The  fellows  used  to  wonder  how  he 
got  to  be  marker,  and  to  plan  how  they  could  get  to  be 
markers  in  other  companies,  if  not  in  the  Butler  Guards. 
There  were  other  companies  that  used  to  come  to  town 
on  the  Fourth  of  July  and  Muster  Day,  from  smaller 
places  round  about ;  and  some  of  them  had  richer  uni- 
forms :  one  company  had  blue  coats  with  gold  epaulets, 
and  gold  braid  going  down  in  loops  on  the  sides  of 
their  legs  ;  all  the  soldiers,  of  course,  had  braid  straight 
down  the  outer  seams  of  their  pantaloons.  One  Muster 
Day,  a  captain  of  one  of  the  country  companies  came 
home  with  my  boy's  father  to  dinner;  he  was  in  full 
uniform,  and  he  put  his  plumed  helmet  down  on  the 
entry  table  just  like  any  other  hat. 

There  was  a  company  of  Germans,  or  Dutchmen,  as 
the  boys  always  called  them ;  and  the  boys  believed 
that  they  each  had  hay  in  his  right  shoe,  and  straw  in 
his  left,  because  a  Dutchman  was  too  dumb,  as  the  boys 
said  for  stupid,  to  know  his  feet  apart  any  other  way ; 
and  that  the  Dutch  officers  had  to  call  out  to  the  men 
when  they  were  marching,  "  Up  mit  de  hay-foot,  down 
mit  de  straw-foot — links,  links,  links  /"  (Left,  left,  left !) 
But  the  boys  honored  even  these  imperfect  intelligences 
so  much  in  their  quality  of  soldiers  that  they  would  any 


THE     '  BUTLER   GUARDS. 


MUSTERS   AND   ELECTIONS.  123 

of  them  have  been  proud  to  be  marker  in  the  Dutch 
company  ;  and  they  followed  the  Dutchmen  round  in 
their  march  as  fondly  as  any  other  body  of  troops.  Of 
course,  school  let  out  when  there  was  a  regular  muster, 
and  the  boys  gave  the  whole  day  to  it ;  but  I  do  not 
know  just  when  the  Muster  Day  came.  They  fired  the 
cannon  a  good  deal  on  the  river-bank,  and  they  must 
have  camped  somewhere  near  the  town,  though  no 
recollection  of  tents  remained  in  my  boy's  mind.  He 
believed  with  the  rest  of  the  boys  that  the  right  way  to 
fire  the  cannon  was  to  get  it  so  hot  you  need  not  touch 
it  off,  but  just  keep  your  thumb  on  the  touch-hole,  and 
take  it  away  when  you  wanted  the  cannon  to  go  off. 
Once  he  saw  the  soldiers  ram  the  piece  full  of  dog- 
fennel  on  top  of  the  usual  charge,  and  then  he  expect- 
ed the  cannon  to  burst.  But  it  only  roared  away  as 
usual. 

The  boys  had  their  own  ideas  of  what  that  cannon 
could  do  if  aptly  fired  into  a  force  of  British,  or  Brid- 
ish,  as  they  called  them.  They  wished  there  could  be 
a  war  with  England,  just  to  see  ;  and  their  national  feel- 
ing was  kept  hot  by  the  presence  of  veterans  of  the 
War  of  1812  at  all  the  celebrations.  One  of  the  boys 
had  a  grandfather  who  had  been  in  the  Revolutionary 
War,  and  when  he  died  the  Butler  Guards  fired  a  salute 
over  his  grave.  It  was  secret  sorrow  and  sometimes 
open  shame  to  my  boy  that  his  grandfather  should  be 
an  Englishman,  and  that  even  his  father  should  have 
been  a  year  old  when  he  came  to  this  country ;  but  on 
his  mother's  side  he  could  boast  a  grandfather  and  a 
great-grandfather  who  had  taken  part,  however  briefly 
or  obscurely,  in  both  the  wars  against  Great  Britain. 
He  hated  just  as  much  as  any  of  the  boys,  or  perhaps 


124  A    BOY'S   TOWN. 

more,  to  be  the  Bridish  when  they  were  playing  war, 
and  he  longed  as  truly  as  any  of  them  to  march  against 
the  hereditary,  or  half-hereditary,  enemy. 

Playing  war  was  one  of  the  regular  plays,  and  the 
'  sides  were  always  Americans  and  Bridish,  and  the  Brid- 
ish always  got  whipped.  But  this  was  a  different  thing, 
and  a  far  less  serious  thing,  than  having  a  company. 
The  boys  began  to  have  companies  after  every  muster, 
of  course ;  but  sometimes  they  began  to  have  them  for 
no  external  reason.  Very  likely  they  would  start  hav- 
ing a  company  from  just  finding  a  rooster's  tail-feather, 
and  begin  making  plumes  at  once.  It  was  easy  to  make 
a  plume  :  you  picked  up  a  lot  of  feathers  that  the  hens 
and  geese  had  dropped ;  and  you  whittled  a  pine  stick, 
and  bound  the  feathers  in  spirals  around  it  with  white 
thread.  That  was  a  first-rate  plume,  but  the  uniform 
offered  the  same  difficulties  as  the  circus  dress,  and  you 
could  not  do  anything  towards  it  by  rolling  up  your 
pantaloons.  It  was  pretty  easy  to  make  swords  out  of 
laths,  but  guns  again  were  hard  to  realize.  Some  fel- 
lows had  little  toy  guns  left  over  from  Christinas,  but 
they  were  considered  rather  babyish,  and  any  kind  of 
stick  was  better ;  the  right  kind  of  a  gun  for  a  boy's 
company  was  a  wooden  gun,  such  as  some  of  the  big 
boys  had,  with  the  barrel  painted  different  from  the  stock. 
The  little  fellows  never  had  any  such  guns,  and  if  the 
question  of  uniform  could  have  been  got  over,  this  ques- 
tion of  arms  would  still  have  remained.  In  these  trou- 
bles the  fellows'  mothers  had  to  suffer  almost  as  much 
as  the  fellows  themselves,  the  fellows  teased  them  so 
much  for  bits  of  finery  that  they  thought  they  could 
turn  to  account  in  eking  out  a  uniform.  Once  it  came 
to  quite  a  lot  of  fellows  getting  their  mothers  to  ask 


MUSTERS   AND    ELECTIONS.  125 

their  fathers  if  they  would  buy  them  some  little  soldier- 
hats  that  one  of  the  hatters  had  laid  in,  perhaps  after  a 
muster,  when  he  knew  the  boys  would  begin  recruiting. 
My  boy  was  by  when  his  mother  asked  his  father,  and 
stood  with  his  heart  in  his  mouth,  while  the  question 
was  argued ;  it  was  decided  against  him,  both  because 
his  father  hated  the  tomfoolery  of  the  thing,  and  be- 
cause he  would  not  have  the  child  honor  any  semblance 
of  soldiering,  even  such  a  feeble  image  of  it  as  a  boys' 
company  could  present.  But,  after  all,  a  paper  chapeau, 
with  a  panache  of  slitted  paper,  was  no  bad  soldier-hat ; 
it  went  far  to  constitute  a  whole  uniform ;  and  it  was 
this  that  the  boys  devolved  upon  at  last.  It  was  the 
only  company  they  ever  really  got  together,  for  every- 
body wanted  to  be  captain  and  lieutenant,  just  as  they 
wanted  to  be  clown  and  ring-master  in  a  circus.  I 
cannot  understand  how  my  boy  came  to  hold  either 
office ;  perhaps  the  fellows  found  that  the  only  way  to 
keep  the  company  together  was  to  take  turn-about ;  but, 
at  any  rate,  he  was  marshalling  his  forces  near  his  grand- 
father's gate  one  evening  when  his  grandfather  came 
home  to  tea.  The  old  Methodist  class-leader,  who  had 
been  born  and  brought  up  a  Quaker,  stared  at  the  poor 
little  apparition  in  horror.  Then  he  caught  the  paper 
chapeau  from  the  boy's  head,  and,  saying  "  Dear  me  ! 
Dear  me !"  trampled  it  under  foot.  It  was  an  awful 
moment,  and  in  his  hot  and  bitter  heart  the  boy,  who 
was  put  to  shame  before  all  his  fellows,  did  not  know 
whether  to  order  them  to  attack  his  grandfather  in  a 
body,  or  to  engage  him  in  single  combat  with  his  own 
lath-sword.  In  the  end  he  did  neither  ;  his  grandfather 
walked  on  into  tea,  and  the  boy  was  left  with  a  wound 
that  was  sore  till  he  grew  old  enough  to  know  how  true 


126  A  boy's  town. 

and  brave  a  man  his  grandfather  was  in  a  cause  where 
so  many  warlike  hearts  wanted  courage. 

It  was  already  the  time  of  the  Mexican  war,  when 
that  part  of  the  West  at  least  was  crazed  with  a  dream 
of  the  conquest  which  was  to  carry  slavery  wherever 
the  flag  of  freedom  went.  The  volunteers  were  mus- 
tered in  at  the  Boy's  Town  ;  and  the  boys,  who  under-1 
stood  that  they  were  real  soldiers,  and  were  going  to  a 
war  where  they  might  get  killed,  suffered  a  disappoint- 
ment from  the  plain  blue  of  their  uniform  and  the  sim- 
plicity of  their  caps,  which  had  not  the  sign  of  a  feather 
in  them.  It  was  a  consolation  to  know  that  they  were 
going  to  fight  the  Mexicans ;  not  so  much  consolation 
as  if  it  had  been  the  Bridish,  though  still  something. 
The  boys  were  proud  of  them,  and  they  did  not  realize 
that  most  of  these  poor  fellows  were  just  country-jakes. 
Somehow  they  effaced  even  the  Butler  Guards  in  their 
fancy,  though  the  Guards  paraded  with  them,  in  all  their 
splendor,  as  escort. 

But  this  civic  satisfaction  was  alloyed  for  my  boy  by 
the  consciousness  that  both  his  father  and  his  grand- 
father abhorred  the  war  that  the  volunteers  were  going 
to.  His  grandfather,  as  an  Abolitionist,  and  his  father, 
as  a  Henry  Clay  Whig,  had  both  been  opposed  to  the 
annexation  of  Texas  ( which  the  boy  heard  talked  of 
without  knowing  in  the  least  what  annexation  meant), 
and  they  were  both  of  the  mind  that  the  war  growing 
out  of  it  was  wanton  and  wicked.  His  father  wrote 
against  it  in  every  number  of  his  paper,  and  made  him- 
self hated  among  its  friends,  who  were  the  large  major- 
ity in  the  Boy's  Town.  My  boy  could  not  help  feeling 
that  his  father  was  little  better  than  a  Mexican,  and 
whilst  his  filial  love  was  hurt  by  things  that  he  heard  to 


MUSTERS   AND   ELECTIONS.  127 

his  disadvantage,  he  was  not  sure  that  he  was  not  right- 
ly hated.  It  gave  him  a  trouble  of  mind  that  was  not 
wholly  appeased  by  some  pieces  of  poetry  that  he  used 
to  hear  his  father  reading  and  quoting  at  that  time, 
with  huge  enjoyment.  The  pieces  were  called  "  The 
Biglow  Papers,"  and  his  father  read  them  out  of  a 
Boston  newspaper,  and  thought  them  the  wisest  and 
wittiest  things  that  ever  were.  The  boy  always  remem- 
bered how  he  recited  the  lines — 

"  Ez  fur  war,  I  call  it  murder — 

There  ye  hev  it  plain  and  flat; 
'N  I  don't  want  to  go  no  furder 

Then  my  Testament  fur  that. 
God  hez  said  so  plump  and  fairly: 

It's  as  long  as  it  is  broad ; 
And  ye'll  hev  to  git  up  airly, 

Ef  ye  want  to  take  in  God." 

He  thought  this  fine,  too,  but  still,  it  seemed  to  him, 
in  the  narrow  little  world  where  a  child  dwells,  that  his 
father  and  his  grandfather  were  about  the  only  people 
there  were  who  did  not  wish  the  Mexicans  whipped, 
and  he  felt  secretly  guilty  for  them  before  the  other 
boys. 

It  was  all  the  harder  to  bear  because,  up  to  this  time, 
there  had  been  no  shadow  of  difference  about  politics 
between  him  and  the  boys  he  went  with.  They  were 
Whig  boys,  and  nearly  all  the  fellows  in  the  Boy's 
Town  seemed  to  be  Whigs.  There  must  have  been 
some  Locofoco  boys,  of  course,  for  my  boy  and  his 
friends  used  to  advance,  on  their  side,  the  position 
that 

"  Democrats 
Eat  dead  rats !" 


128  A   BOYS   TOWN. 

The  counter-argument  that 

"  Whigs 
Eat  dead  pigs !" 

had  no  force  in  a  pork-raising  country  like  that ;  but  it 
was  urged,  and  there  must  have  been  Democratic  boys 
to  urge  it.  Still,  they  must  have  been  few  in  number, 
or  else  my  boy  did  not  know  them.  At  any  rate,  they 
had  no  club,  and  the  Whig  boys  always  had  a  club. 
They  had  a  Henry  Clay  Club  in  1844,  and  they  had 
Buckeye  Clubs  whenever  there  was  an  election  for  gov- 
ernor, and  they  had  clubs  at  every  exciting  town  or 
county  or  district  election.  The  business  of  a  Whig 
club  among  the  boys  was  to  raise  ash  flag  -  poles,  in 
honor  of  Henry  Clay's  home  at  Ashland,  and  to  learn 
the  Whig  songs  and  go  about  singing  them.  You  had 
to  have  a  wagon,  too,  and  some  of  the  club  pulled  while 
the  others  rode ;  it  could  be  such  a  wagon  as  you  went 
walnutting  with  ;  and  you  had  to  wear  strands  of  buck- 
eyes round  your  neck.  Then  you  were  a  real  Whig 
boy,  and  you  had  a  right  to  throw  fire-balls  and  roll 
tar-barrels  for  the  bonfires  on  election  nights. 

I  do  not  know  why  there  should  have  been  so  many 
empty  tar-barrels  in  the  Boy's  Town,  or  what  they  used 
so  much  tar  for ;  but  there  were  barrels  enough  to  cele- 
brate all  the  Whig  victories  that  the  boys  ever  heard 
of,  and  more,  too  ;  the  boys  did  not  always  wait  for  the 
victories,  but  celebrated  every  election  with  bonfires,  in 
the  faith  that  it  would  turn  out  right. 

Maybe  the  boys  nowadays  do  not  throw  fire-balls, 
or  know  about  them.  They  were  made  of  cotton  rags 
wound  tight  and  sewed,  and  then  soaked  in  turpentine. 
When  a  ball  was  lighted  a  boy  caught  it  quickly  up, 


MUSTERS   AND    ELECTIONS.  129 

and  threw  it,  and  it  made  a  splendid  streaming  blaze 
through  the  air,  and  a  thrilling  whir  as  it  flew.  A 
boy  had  to  be  very  nimble  not  to  get  burned,  and  a 
great  many  boys  dropped  the  ball  for  every  boy  that 
threw  it.  I  am  not  ready  to  say  why  these  fire-balls 
did  not  set  the  Boy's  Town  on  fire,  and  burn  it  down, 
but  I  know  they  never  did.  There  was  no  law  against 
them,  and  the  boys  were  never  disturbed  in  throwing 
them,  any  more  than  they  were  in  building  bonfires ; 
and  this  shows,  as  much  as  anything,  what  a  glorious 
town  that  was  for  boys.  The  way  they  used  to  build 
their  bonfires  was  to  set  one  tar-barrel  on  top  of  an- 
other, as  high  as  the  biggest  boy  could  reach,  and  then 
drop  a  match  into  them ;  in  a  moment  a  dusky,  smoky 
flame  would  burst  from  the  top,  and  fly  there  like  a 
crimson  flag,  while  all  the  boys  leaped  and  danced  round 
it,  and  hurrahed  for  the  Whig  candidates.  Sometimes 
they  would  tumble  the  blazing  barrels  over,  and  roll  them 
up  and  down  the  street. 

The  reason  why  they  wore  buckeyes  was  that  the 
buckeye  was  the  emblem  of  Ohio,  and  Ohio,  they  knew, 
was  a  Whig  state.  I  doubt  if  they  knew  that  the  local 
elections  always  Avent  heavily  against  the  Whigs ;  but 
perhaps  they  would  not  have  cared.  What  they  felt 
was  a  high  public  spirit,  which  had  to  express  itself  in 
some  way.  One  night,  out  of  pure  zeal  for  the  common 
good,  they  wished  to  mob  the  negro  quarter  of  the 
town,  because  the  "  Dumb  Negro  "  (  a  deaf  -  mute  of 
color  who  was  a  very  prominent  personage  in  their 
eyes)  was  said  to  have  hit  a  white  boy.  I  believe  the 
mob  never  came  to  anything.  I  only  know  that  my 
boy  ran  a  long  way  with  the  other  fellows,  and,  when 
he  gave  out,  had  to  come  home  alone  through  the  dark, 


130  A   BOY'S   TOWN. 

and  was  so  afraid  of  ghosts  that  he  would  have  been 
glad  of  the  company  of  the  lowest-down  black  boy  in 
town. 

There  were  always  fights  on  election-day  between 
well  -  known  Whig  and  Democratic  champions,  which 
the  boys  somehow  felt  were  as  entirely  for  their  enter- 
tainment as  the  circuses.  My  boy  never  had  the  heart 
to  look  on,  but  he  shared  the  excitement  of  the  affair, 
and  rejoiced  in  the  triumph  of  Whig  principles  in  these 
contests  as  cordially  as  the  hardiest  witness.  The  fight- 
ing must  have  come  from  the  drinking,  which  began  as 
soon  as  the  polls  were  opened,  and  went  on  all  day  and 
night  with  a  devotion  to  principle  which  is  now  rarely 
seen.  In  fact,  the  politics  of  the  Boy's  Town  seem  to 
have  been  transacted  with  an  eye  single  to  the  diversion 
of  the  boys ;  or  if  not  that  quite,  they  were  marked  by 
traits  of  a  primitive  civilization  among  the  men.  The 
traditions  of  a  rude  hospitality  in  the  pioneer  times  still 
lingered,  and  once  there  was  a  Whig  barbecue,  which 
had  all  the  profusion  of  a  civic  feast  in  mediaeval  Italy. 
Every  Whig  family  contributed  loaves  of  bread  and 
boiled  hams ;  the  Whig  farmers  brought  in  barrels  of 
cider  and  wagon-loads  of  apples ;  there  were  heaps  of 
pies  and  cakes ;  sheep  were  roasted  whole,  and  young 
roast  pigs,  with  oranges  in  their  mouths,  stood  in  the 
act  of  chasing  one  another  over  the  long  tables  which 
were  spread  in  one  of  the  largest  pork-houses,  where 
every  comer  was  freely  welcome.  I  suppose  boys, 
though,  were  not  allowed  at  the  dinner ;  all  that  my 
boy  saw  of  the  barbecue  were  the  heaps  of  loaves  and 
hams  left  over,  that  piled  the  floor  in  one  of  the  rooms 
to  the  ceiling. 

He  remained  an  ardent  Whig  till  his  eleventh  year, 


MTTSTERS   AND   ELECTIONS.  131 

when  his  father  left  the  party  because  the  Whigs  had 
nominated,  as  their  candidate  for  president,  General 
Taylor,  who  had  won  his  distinction  in  the  Mexican 
war,  and  was  believed  to  be  a  friend  of  slavery,  though 
afterwards  he  turned  out  otherwise.  My  boy  then  joined 
a  Free-Soil  club,  and  sang  songs  in  support  of  Van  Buren 
and  Adams.  His  faith  in  the  purity  of  the  Whigs  had 
been  much  shaken  by  their  behavior  in  trying  to  make 
capital  out  of  a  war  they  condemned ;  and  he  had  been 
bitterly  disappointed  by  their  preferring  Taylor  to  Tom 
Corwin,  the  favorite  of  the  anti  -  slavery  Whigs.  The 
"  Biglow  Papers "  and  their  humor  might  not  have 
moved  him  from  his  life-long  allegiance,  but  the  elo- 
quence of  Corwin's  famous  speech  against  the  Mexican 
war  had  grounded  him  in  principles  which  he  could 
not  afterwards  forsake.  He  had  spoken  passages  of 
that  speech  at  school ;  he  had  warned  our  invading 
hosts  of  the  vengeance  that  has  waited  upon  the  lust 
of  conquest  in  all  times,  and  has  driven  the  conquerors 
back  with  trailing  battle-flags.  "  So  shall  it  be  with 
yours  !"  he  had  declaimed.  "  You  may  carry  them  to 
the  loftiest  peaks  of  the  Cordilleras ;  they  may  float  in 
insolent  triumph  in  the  halls  of  Montezuma;  but  the 
weakest  hand  in  Mexico,  uplifted  in  prayer,  can  call 
down  a  power  against  you  before  which  the  iron  hearts 
of  your  warriors  shall  be  turned  into  ashes !"  It  must 
have  been  a  terrible  wrench  for  him  to  part  from  the 
Whig  boys  in  politics,  and  the  wrench  must  have  been 
a  sudden  one  at  last ;  he  was  ashamed  of  his  father  for 
opposing  the  war,  and  then,  all  at  once,  he  was  proud 
of  him  for  it,  and  was  roaring  out  songs  against  Taylor 
as  the  hero  of  that  war,  and  praising  Little  Van,  whom 
he  had  hitherto  despised  as  the  "  Fox  of  Kinderhook." 


132  A   BOY'S   TOWN. 

The  fox  was  the  emblem  (totem)  of  the  Democrats  in 
the  campaigns  of  1840  and  1844  ;  and  in  their  proces- 
sions they  always  had  a  fox  chained  to  the  hickory  flag- 
poles which  they  carried  round  on  their  wagons,  togeth- 
er with  a  cock,  reconciled  probably  in  a  common  terror. 
The  Whigs  always  had  the  best  processions ;  and  one 
of  the  most  signal  days  of  my  boy's  life  was  the  day  he 
spent  in  following  round  a  Henry  Clay  procession,  where 
the  different  trades  and  industries  were  represented  in 
the  wagons.  There  were  coopers,  hatters,  shoemakers, 
blacksmiths,  bakers,  tinners,  and  others,  all  hard  at  work ; 
and  from  time  to  time  they  threw  out  to  the  crowd 
something  they  had  made.  My  boy  caught  a  tin  cup, 
and  if  it  had  been  of  solid  silver  he  could  not  have  felt 
it  a  greater  prize.  He  ran  home  to  show  it  and  leave 
it  in  safe-keeping,  and  then  hurried  back,  so  as  to  walk 
with  the  other  boys  abreast  of  a  great  platform  on 
wheels,  where  an  old  woman  sat  spinning  inside  of  a 
log-cabin,  and  a  pioneer  in  a  hunting-shirt  stood  at  the 
door,  with  his  long  rifle  in  his  hand.  In  the  window 
sat  a  raccoon,  which  was  the  Whig  emblem,  and  which,  on 
all  their  banners,  was  painted  with  the  legend,"  That  same 
old  Coon !"  to  show  that  they  had  not  changed  at  all 
since  the  great  days  when  they  elected  the  pioneer, 
General  Harrison,  president  of  the  United  States.  An- 
other proof  of  the  fact  was  the  barrel  of  hard -cider 
which  lay  under  the  cabin  window. 


XII. 

PETS. 

As  there  are  no  longer  any  Whig  hoys  in  the  world, 
the  coon  can  no  longer  be  kept  anywhere  as  a  political 
emblem,  I  dare  say.  Even  in  my  boy's  time  the  boys 
kept  coons  just  for  the  pleasure  of  it,  and  without  mean- 
ing to  elect  Whig  governors  and  presidents  with  them. 
I  do  not  know  how  they  got  them — they  traded  for 
them,  perhaps,  with  fellows  in  the  country  that  had 
caught  them,  or  perhaps  their  fathers  bought  them  in 
market ;  some  people  thought  they  were  very  good  to 
eat,  and,  like  poultry  and  other  things  for  the  table,  they 
may  have  been  brought  alive  to  market.  But,  anyhow, 
when  a  boy  had  a  coon,  he  had  to  have  a  store-box 
turned  open  side  down  to  keep  it  in,  behind  the  house ; 
and  he  had  to  have  a  little  door  in  the  box  to  pull  the 
coon  out  through  when  he  wanted  to  show  it  to  other 
boys,  or  to  look  at  it  himself,  which  he  did  forty  or  fifty 
times  a  day,  when  he  first  got  it.  He  had  to  have  a 
small  collar  for  the  coon,  and  a  little  chain,  because  the 
coon  would  gnaw  through  a  string  in  a  minute.  The 
coon  himself  never  seemed  to  take  much  interest  in 
keeping  a  coon,  or  to  see  much  fun  or  sense  in  it.  He 
liked  to  stay  inside  his  box,  where  he  had  a  bed  of  hay, 
and  whenever  the  boy  pulled  him  out,  he  did  his  best 
to  bite  the  boy.  He  had  no  tricks ;  his  temper  was 
bad ;  and  there  was  nothing  about  him  except  the  rings 


134  A   BOY'S   TOWN. 

round  his  tail  and  his  political  principles  that  anybody 
could  care  for.  He  never  did  anything  but  bite,  and 
try  to  get  away,  or  else  run  back  into  his  box,  which 
smelt,  pretty  soon,  like  an  animal-show  ;  he  would  not 
even  let  a  fellow  see  him  eat. 

My  boy's  brother  had  a  coon,  which  he  kept  a  good 
while,  at  a  time  when  there  was  no  election,  for  the 
mere  satisfaction  of  keeping  a  coon.  During  his  cap- 
tivity the  coon  bit  his  keeper  repeatedly  through  the 
thumb,  and  upon  the  whole  seemed  to  prefer  him  to  any 
other  food ;  I  do  not  really  know  what  coons  eat  in  a 
wild  state,  but  this  captive  coon  tasted  the  blood  of 
nearly  that  whole  family  of  children.  Besides  biting 
and  getting  away,  he  never  did  the  slightest  thing 
worth  remembering ;  as  there  was  no  election,  he  did 
not  even  take  part  in  a  Whig  procession.  He  got  away 
two  or  three  times.  The  first  thing  his  owner  would 
know  when  he  pulled  the  chain  out  was  that  there  was 
no  coon  at  the  end  of  it,  and  then  he  would  have  to 
poke  round  the  inside  of  the  box  pretty  carefully  with 
a  stick,  so  as  not  to  get  bitten ;  after  that  he  would 
have  to  see  which  tree  the  coon  had  gone  up.  It  was 
usually  the  tall  locust-tree  in  front  of  the  house,  and  in 
about  half  a  second  all  the  boys  in  town  would  be  there, 
telling  the  owner  of  the  coon  how  to  get  him.  Of 
course  the  only  way  was  to  climb  for  the  coon,  which 
would  be  out  at  the  point  of  a  high  and  slender  limb, 
and  would  bite  you  awfully,  even  if  the  limb  did  not 
break  under  you,  while  the  boys  kept  whooping  and 
yelling  and  holloing  out  what  to  do,  and  Tip  the  dog 
just  howled  with  excitement.  I  do  not  know  how  that 
coon  was  ever  caught,  but  I  know  that  the  last  time  he 
got  away  he  was  not  found  during  the  day,  but  after 


PETS.  135 

nightfall  he  was  discovered  by  moonlight  in  the  locust- 
tree.  His  owner  climbed  for  him,  but  the  coon  kept 
shifting  about,  and  getting  higher  and  higher,  and  at 
last  he  had  to  be  left  till  morning.  In  the  morning  he 
was  not  there,  nor  anywhere. 

It  had  been  expected,  perhaps,  that  Tip  would  watch 
him,  and  grab  him  if  he  came  down,  and  Tip  would 
have  done  it  probably  if  he  had  kept  awake.  He  was 
a  dog  of  the  greatest  courage,  and  he  was  especially 
fond  of  hunting.  He  had  been  bitten  oftener  by  that 
coon  than  anybody  but  the  coon's  owner,  but  he  did  not 
care  for  biting.  He  was  always  getting  bitten  by  rats, 
but  he  was  the  greatest  dog  for  rats  that  there  almost 
ever  was.  The  boys  hunted  rats  with  him  at  night, 
when  they  came  out  of  the  stables  that  backed  down  to 
the  Hydraulic,  for  water ;  and  a  dog  who  liked  above 
all  things  to  lie  asleep  on  the  back-step,  by  day,  and 
would  no  more  think  of  chasing  a  pig  out  of  the  gar- 
den than  he  would  think  of  sitting  up  all  night  with  a 
coon,  would  get  frantic  about  rats,  and  would  perfectly 
wear  himself  out  hunting  them  on  land  and  in  the 
water,  and  keep  on  after  the  boys  themselves  were 
tired.  He  was  so  fond  of  hunting,  anyway,  that  the 
sight  of  a  gun  would  drive  him  about  crazy ;  he  would 
lick  the  barrel  all  over,  and  wag  his  tail  so  hard  that  it 
would  lift  his  hind-legs  off  the  ground. 

I  do  not  know  how  he  came  into  that  family,  but  I 
believe  he  was  given  to  it  full  grown  by  somebody.  It 
was  some  time  after  my  boy  failed  to  buy  what  he  called 
a  Confoundland  dog,  from  a  colored  boy  who  had  it  for 
sale,  a  pretty  puppy  with  white  and  black  spots  which 
he  had  quite  set  his  heart  on ;  but  Tip  more  than  con- 
soled him.     Tip  was  of  no  particular  breed,  and  he  had 


136  A   BOY'S   TOWN. 

no  personal  beauty  ;  lie  was  of  the  color  of  a  mouse  or 
an  elephant,  and  his  tail  was  without  the  smallest  grace ; 
it  was  smooth  and  round,  but  it  was  so  strong  that  he 
could  pull  a  boy  all  over  the  town  by  it,  and  usually  did ; 
and  he  had  the  best,  and  kindest,  and  truest  ugly  old  face 
in  the  world.  He  loved  the  whole  human  race,  and  as  a 
watch-dog  he  was  a  failure  through  his  trustful  nature ;  he 
would  no  more  have  bitten  a  person  than  he  would  have 
bitten  a  pig ;  but  where  other  dogs  were  concerned,  he 
was  a  lion.  He  might  be  lying  fast  asleep  in  the  back- 
yard, and  he  usually  was,  but  if  a  dog  passed  the  front 
of  the  house  under  a  wagon,  he  would  be  up  and  after 
that  dog  before  you  knew  what  you  were  about.  He 
seemed  to  want  to  fight  country  dogs  the  worst,  but  any 
strange  dog  would  do.  A  good  half  the  time  he  would 
come  off  best ;  but,  however  he  came  off,  he  returned  to 
the  back-yard  with  his  tongue  hanging  out,  and  wagging 
his  tail  in  good-humor  with  all  the  world.  Nothing 
could  stop  him,  however,  where  strange  dogs  were  con- 
cerned. He  was  a  Whig  dog,  of  course,  as  any  one 
could  tell  by  his  name,  which  was  Tippecanoe  in  full, 
and  was  given  him  because  it  was  the  nickname  of 
General  Harrison,  the  great  Whig  who  won  the  battle 
of  Tippecanoe.  The  boys'  Henry  Clay  Club  used  him 
to  pull  the  little  wagon  that  they  went  about  in  singing 
Whig  songs,  and  he  would  pull  five  or  six  boys,  guided 
simply  by  a  stick  which  he  held  in  his  mouth,  and  which 
a  boy  held  on  either  side  of  him.  •  But  if  he  caught 
sight  of  a  dog  that  he  did  not  know,  he  would  drop 
that  stick  and  start  for  that  dog  as  far  off  as  he  could 
see  him,  spilling  the  Henry  Clay  Club  out  of  the  wagon 
piecemeal  as  he  went,  and  never  stopping  till  he  mixed 
up  the  strange  dog  in  a  fight  where  it  would  have  been 


PETS.  137 

hard  to  tell  which  was  either  champion  and  which  was 
the  club  wagon.  When  the  fight  was  over  Tip  would 
come  smilingly  back  to  the  fragments  of  the  Henry  Clay 
Club,  with  pieces  of  the  vehicle  sticking  about  him,  and 
profess  himself,  in  a  dog's  way,  ready  to  go  on  with  the 
concert. 

Any  crowd  of  boys  could  get  Tip  to  go  off  with  them, 
in  swimming,  or  hunting,  or  simply  running  races.  He 
was  known  through  the  whole  town,  and  beloved  for  his 
many  endearing  qualities  of  heart.  As  to  his  mind,  it 
was  perhaps  not  much  to  brag  of,  and  he  certainly  had 
some  defects  of  character.  He  was  incurably  lazy,  and 
his  laziness  grew  upon  him  as  he  grew  older,  till  hardly 
anything  but  the  sight  of  a  gun  or  a  bone  would  move 
him.  He  lost  his  interest  in  politics,  and,  though  there 
is  no  reason  to  suppose  that  he  ever  became  indifferent 
to  his  principles,  it  is  certain  that  he  no  longer  showed 
his  early  ardor.  He  joined  the  Free-Soil  movement  in 
1848,  and  supported  Van  Buren  and  Adams,  but  with- 
out the  zeal  he  had  shown  for  Henry  Clay.  Once  a 
year  as  long  as  the  family  lived  in  the  Boy's  Town,  the 
children  were  anxious  about  Tip  when  the  dog-law  was 
put  in  force,  and  the  constables  went  round  shooting  all 
the  dogs  that  were  found  running  at  large  without  muz- 
zles. At  this  time,  when  Tip  was  in  danger  of  going 
mad  and  biting  people,  he  showed  a  most  unseasonable 
activity,  and  could  hardly  be  kept  in  bounds.  A  dog 
whose  sole  delight  at  other  moments  was  to  bask  in  the 
summer  sun,  or  dream  by  the  winter  fire,  would  now 
rouse  himself  to  an  interest  in  everything  that  was  go- 
ing on  in  the  dangerous  world,  and  make  forays  into  it 
at  all  unguarded  points.  The  only  thing  to  do  was  to 
muzzle  him,  and  this  was  done  by  my  boy's  brother  with 


138  A  boy's  town. 

a  piece  of  heavy  twine,  in  such  a  manner  as  to  inter- 
fere with  Tip's  happiness  as  little  as  possible.  It  was  a 
muzzle  that  need  not  be  removed  for  either  eating, 
drinking,  or  fighting ;  but  it  satisfied  the  law,  and  Tip 
always  came  safely  through  the  dog-days,  perhaps  by 
favor  or  affection  with  the  officers  who  were  so  inexora- 
ble with  some  dogs. 

My  boy  long  remembered  with  horror  and  remorse 
his  part  in  giving  up  to  justice  an  unconscious  offender, 
and  seeing  him  pay  for  his  transgression  with  his  life. 
The  boy  was  playing  before  his  door,  when  a  constable 
came  by  with  his  rifle  on  his  shoulder,  and  asked  him  if 
he  had  seen  any  unmuzzled  dogs  about ;  and  partly  from 
pride  at  being  addressed  by  a  constable,  partly  from  a 
nervous  fear  of  refusing  to  answer,  and  partly  from  a 
childish  curiosity  to  see  what  would  happen,  he  said, 
"  Yes  ;  one  over  there  by  the  pork-house."  The  consta- 
ble whistled,  and  the  poor  little  animal,  which  had  got 
lost  from  the  farmer  it  had  followed  to  town,  came  run- 
ning into  sight  round  the  corner  of  the  pork-house,  and 
sat  up  on  its  haunches  to  look  about.  It  was  a  small 
red  dog,  the  size  of  a  fox,  and  the  boy  always  saw  it 
afterwards  as  it  sat  there  in  the  gray  afternoon,  and 
fascinated  him  with  its  deadly  peril.  The  constable 
swung  his  rifle  quickly  to  his  shoulder ;  the  sharp, 
whiplike  report  came,  and  the  dog  dropped  over,  and 
its  heart's  blood  flowed  upon  the  ground  and  lay  there 
in  a  pool.  The  boy  ran  into  the  house,  with  that  pict- 
ure forever  printed  in  his  memory.  For  him  it  was  as 
if  he  had  seen  a  fellow-being  slain,  and  had  helped  to 
bring  him  to  his  death. 

Whilst  Tip  was  still  in  his  prime  the  family  of  chil- 
dren was  further  enriched  by  the  possession  of  a  goat ; 


PETS.  139 

but  this  did  not  belong  to  the  whole  family,  or  it  was, 
at  least  nominally,  the  property  of  that  eldest  brother 
they  all  looked  up  to.  I  do  not  know  how  tbey  came 
by  the  goat,  any  more  than  I  know  how  they  came  by 
Tip ;  I  only  know  that  there  came  a  time  when  it  was 
already  in  the  family,  and  that  before  it  was  got  rid  of 
it  was  a  presence  there  was  no  mistaking.  Nobody 
who  has  not  kept  a  goat  can  have  any  notion  of  how 
many  different  kinds  of  mischief  a  goat  can  get  into, 
without  seeming  to  try,  either,  but  merely  by  following 
the  impulses  of  its  own  goatishness.  This  one  was  a 
nanny-goat,  and  it  answered  to  the  name  of  Nanny  with 
an  intelligence  that  was  otherwise  wholly  employed  in 
making  trouble.  It  went  up  and  down  stairs,  from  cel- 
lar to  garret,  and  in  and  out  of  all  the  rooms,  like  any- 
body, with  a  faint,  cynical  indifference  in  the  glance  of 
its  cold  gray  eyes  that  gave  no  hint  of  its  purposes  or 
performances.  In  the  chambers  it  chewed  the  sheets 
and  pillow-cases  on  the  beds,  and  in  the  dining-room, 
if  it  found  nothing  else,  it  would  do  its  best  to  eat  the 
table-cloth.  Washing-day  was  a  perfect  feast  for  it,  for 
then  it  would  banquet  on  the  shirt-sleeves  and  stockings 
that  dangled  from  the  clothes-line,  and  simply  glut  itself 
with  the  family  linen  and  cotton.  In  default  of  these 
dainties,  Nanny  would  gladly  eat  a  chip-hat ;  she  was 
not  proud ;  she  would  eat  a  split-basket,  if  there  was 
nothing  else  at  hand.  Once  she  got  up  on  the  kitchen- 
table,  and  had  a  perfect  orgy  with  a  lot  of  fresh-baked 
pumpkin-pies  she  found  there ;  she  cleaned  all  the  pump- 
kin so  neatly  out  of  the  pastry  shells  that,  if  there  had 
been  any  more  pumpkin  left,  they  could  have  been  filled 
up  again,  and  nobody  could  have  told  the  difference. 
The  grandmother,  who  was  visiting  in  the  house  at  the 


140  A   BOY'S   TOWN. 

time,  declared  to  the  mother  that  it  would  serve  the  fa- 
ther and  the  hoys  just  right  if  she  did  fill  these  very 
shells  up  and  give  them  to  the  father  and  the  boys  to 
eat.  But  I  believe  this  was  not  done,  and  it  was  only 
suggested  in  a  moment  of  awful  exasperation,  and  be- 
cause it  was  the  father  who  was  to  blame  for  letting  the 
boys  keep  the  goat.  The  mother  was  always  saying  that 
the  goat  should  not  stay  in  the  house  another  day,  but 
she  had  not  the  heart  to  insist  on  its  banishment,  the 
children  were  so  fond  of  it.  I  do  not  know  why  they 
were  fond  of  it,  for  it  never  showed  them  the  least  af- 
fection, but  was  always  taking  the  most  unfair  advan- 
tages of  them,  and  it  would  butt  them  over  whenever  it 
got  the  chance.  It  would  try  to  butt  them  into  the  well 
when  they  leaned  down  to  pull  up  the  bucket  from  the 
curb ;  and  if  it  came  out  of  the  house,  and  saw  a  boy 
cracking  nuts  at  the  low  flat  stone  the  children  had  in 
the  back-yard  to  crack  nuts  on,  it  would  pretend  that 
the  boy  was  making  motions  to  insult  it,  and  before  he 
knew  what  he  was  about  it  would  fly  at  him  and  send 
him  spinning  head  over  heels.  It  was  not  of  the  least 
use  in  the  world,  and  could  not  be,  but  the  children 
were  allowed  to  keep  it  till,  one  fatal  day,  when  the 
mother  had  a  number  of  other  ladies  to  tea,  as  the  fash- 
ion used  to  be  in  small  towns,  when  they  sat  down  to 
a  comfortable  gossip  over  dainty  dishes  of  stewed  chick- 
en, hot  biscuit,  peach-preserves,  sweet  tomato-pickles, 
and  pound-cake.  That  day  they  all  laid  off  their  bon- 
nets on  the  hall -table,  and  the  goat,  after  demurely 
waiting  and  watching  with  its  faded  eyes,  which  saw 
everything  and  seemed  to  see  nothing,  discerned  a 
golden  opportunity,  and  began  to  make  such  a  supper 
of  bonnet-ribbons  as  perhaps  never  fell  to  a  goat's  lot  in 


PETS.  141 

life  before.  It  was  detected  in  its  stolen  joys  just  as  it 
had  chewed  the  ribbon  of  a  best  bonnet  up  to  the  bon- 
net, and  was  chased  into  the  back-yard ;  but,  as  it  had 
swallowed  the  ribbon  without  being  able  to  swallow  the 
bonnet,  it  carried  that  with  it.  The  boy  who  specially 
owned  the  goat  ran  it  down  in  a  frenzy  of  horror  and  ap- 
prehension, and  managed  to  unravel  the  ribbon  from  its 
throat,  and  get  back  the  bonnet.  Then  he  took  the  bon- 
net in  and  laid  it  carefully  down  on  the  table  again,  and 
decided  that  it  would  be  best  not  to  say  anything  about 
the  affair.  But  such  a  thing  as  that  could  not  be  kept. 
The  goat  was  known  at  once  to  have  done  the  mischief ; 
and  this  time  it  was  really  sent  away.  All  the  children 
mourned  it,  and  the  boy  who  owned  it  the  most  used  to 
go  to  the  house  of  the  people  who  took  it,  and  who  had 
a  high  board  fence  round  their  yard,  and  try  to  catch 
sight  of  it  through  the  cracks.  When  he  called  "  Nan- 
ny !"  it  answered  him  instantly  with  a  plaintive  "  Baa !" 
and  then,  after  a  vain  interchange  of  lamentations,  he 
had  to  come  away,  and  console  himself  as  he  could  with 
the  pets  that  were  left  him. 

Among  these  were  a  family  of  white  rabbits,  which 
the  boys  kept  in  a  little  hutch  at  the  bottom  of  the  yard. 
They  were  of  no  more  use  than  the  goat  was,  but  they 
were  at  least  not  mischievous,  and  there  was  only  one 
of  them  that  would  bite,  and  he  would  not  bite  if  you 
would  take  him  up  close  behind  the  ears,  so  that  he 
could  not  get  at  you.  The  rest  were  very  good-natured, 
and  would  let  you  smooth  them,  or  put  them  inside  of 
your  shirt-bosom,  or  anything.  They  would  eat  cab- 
bage or  bread  or  apples  out  of  your  hand ;  and  it  was  fun 
to  see  their  noses  twitch.  Otherwise  they  had  no  ac- 
complishments.    All  you  could  do  with  them  was  to 


142  A   BOY'S   TOWN. 

trade  with  other  boys,  or  else  keep  the  dogs  from  them ; 
it  was  pretty  exciting  to  keep  the  dogs  from  them. 
Tip  was  such  a  good  dog  that  he  never  dreamed  of 
touching  the  rabbits. 

Of  course  these  boys  kept  chickens.  The  favorite 
chicken  in  those  days  was  a  small  white  bantam,  and 
the  more  feathers  it  had  down  its  legs  the  better.  My 
boy  had  a  bantam  hen  that  was  perfectly  white,  and  so 
tame  that  she  would  run  up  to  him  whenever  he  came 
into  the  yard,  and  follow  him  round  like  a  dog.  When 
she  had  chickens  she  taught  them  to  be  just  as  fond  of 
him,  and  the  tiny  little  balls  of  yellow  down  tumbled 
fearlessly  about  in  his  hands,  and  pecked  the  crumbs 
of  bread  between  his  fingers.  As  they  got  older  they 
ran  with  their  mother  to  meet  him,  and  when  he  sat 
down  on  the  grass  they  clambered  over  him  and  crept 
into  his  shirt-bosom,  and  crooned  softly,  as  they  did  when 
their  mother  hovered  them.  The  boy  loved  them  bet- 
ter than  anything  he  ever  had ;  he  always  saw  them 
safe  in  the  coop  at  night,  and  he  ran  out  early  in  the 
morning  to  see  how  they  had  got  through  the  night, 
and  to  feed  them.  One  fatal  morning  he  found  them 
all  scattered  dead  upon  the  grass,  the  mother  and  every 
one  of  her  pretty  chicks,  with  no  sign  upon  them  of 
how  they  had  been  killed.  He  could  only  guess  that 
they  had  fallen  a  prey  to  rats,  or  to  some  owl  that  had 
got  into  their  coop ;  but,  as  they  had  not  been  torn  or 
carried  away,  he  guessed  in  vain.  He  buried  them  with 
the  sympathy  of  all  the  children  and  all  the  fellows 
at  school  who  heard  about  the  affair.  It  was  a  real 
grief ;  it  was  long  before  he  could  think  of  his  loss 
without  tears ;  and  I  am  not  sure  there  is  so  much  dif- 
ference of  quality  in  our  bereavements ;  the  loss  can 


PETS.  143 

hurt  more  or  it  can  hurt  less,  but  the  pang  must  be  al- 
ways the  same  in  kind. 

Besides  his  goat,  my  boy's  brother  kept  pigeons, 
which,  again,  were  like  the  goat  and  the  rabbits  in  not 
being  of  very  much  use.  They  had  to  be  much  more 
carefully  looked  after  than  chickens  when  they  were 
young,  they  were  so  helpless  in  their  nests,  such  mere 
weak  wads  of  featherless  flesh.  At  first  you  had  to 
open  their  bills  and  poke  the  food  in ;  and  you  had  to 
look  out  how  you  gave  them  water  for  fear  you  would 
drown  them  ;  but  when  they  got  a  little  larger  they 
would  drink  and  eat  from  your  mouth ;  and  that  was 
some  pleasure,  for  they  did  not  seem  to  know  you  from 
an  old  pigeon  when  you  took  your  mouth  full  of  corn 
or  water  and  fed  them.  Afterwards,  when  they  began 
to  fly,  it  was  a  good  deal  of  fun  to  keep  them,  and  make 
more  cots  for  them,  and  build  them  nests  in  the  cots. 

But  they  were  not  very  intelligent  pets ;  hardly  more 
intelligent  than  the  fish  that  the  boys  kept  in  the  large 
wooden  hogshead  of  rain-water  at  the  corner  of  the 
house.  They  had  caught  some  of  these  fish  when  they 
were  quite  small,  and  the  fish  grew  very  fast,  for  there 
was  plenty  of  food  for  them  in  the  mosquito-tadpoles 
that  abounded  in  the  hogshead.  Then,  the  boys  fed 
them  every  day  with  bread-crumbs  and  worms.  There 
was  one  big  sunfish  that  was  not  afraid  of  anything ;  if 
you  held  a  worm  just  over  him  he  would  jump  out  of 
the  water  and  snatch  it.  Besides  the  fish,  there  was  a 
turtle  in  the  hogshead,  and  he  had  a  broad  chip  that  he 
liked  to  sun  himself  on.  It  was  fun  to  watch  him  rest- 
ing on  this  chip,  with  his  nose  barely  poked  out  of  his 
shell,  and  his  eyes,  with  the  skin  dropped  over  them, 
just  showing.     He  had  some  tricks :  he  would  snap  at 


144  A    BOY'S   TOWN. 

a  stick  if  you  teased  him  with  it,  and  would  let  you  lift 
him  up  by  it.     That  was  a  good  deal  of  pleasure. 

But  all  these  were  trifling  joys,  except  maybe  Tip  and 
Nanny,  compared  with  the  pony  which  the  boys  owned 
in  common,  and  which  was  the  greatest  thing  that  ever 
came  into  their  lives.  I  cannot  tell  just  how  their  father 
came  to  buy  it  for  them,  or  where  he  got  it ;  but  I  dare 
say  he  thought  they  were  about  old  enough  for  a  pony, 
and  might  as  well  have  one.  It  was  a  Mexican  pony, 
and  as  it  appeared  on  the  scene  just  after  the  Mexican 
war,  some  volunteer  may  have  brought  it  home.  One 
volunteer  brought  home  a  Mexican  dog,  that  was  smooth 
and  hairless,  with  a  skin  like  an  elephant,  and  that  was 
always  shivering  round  with  the  cold ;  he  was  not  oth- 
erwise a  remarkable  dog,  and  I  do  not  know  that  he 
ever  felt  even  the  warmth  of  friendship  among  the 
boys  ;  his  manners  were  reserved  and  his  temper  seemed 
doubtful.  But  the  pony  never  had  any  trouble  with 
the  climate  of  Southern  Ohio  (which  is  indeed  hot 
enough  to  fry  a  salamander  in  summer)  ;  and  though 
his  temper  was  no  better  than  other  ponies',  he  wras 
perfectly  approachable.  I  mean  that  he  was  approach- 
able from  the  side,  for  it  was  not  well  to  get  where  he 
could  bite  you  or  kick  you.  He  was  of  a  bright  sorrel 
color,  and  he  had  a  brand  on  one  haunch.  My  boy  had 
an  ideal  of  a  pony,  conceived  from  pictures  in  his  read- 
ing-books at  school,  that  held  its  head  high  and  arched 
its  neck,  and  he  strove  by  means  of  checks  and  martin- 
gales to  make  this  real  pony  conform  to  the  illustra- 
tions. But  it  was  of  no  use ;  the  real  pony  held  his 
neck  straight  out  like  a  ewe,  or,  if  reined  up,  like  a 
camel,  and  he  hung  his  big  head  at  the  end  of  it  with 
no  regard  whatever  for  the  ideal.     His  caparison  was 


PETS.  145 

another  mortification  and  failure.  What  the  boy  want- 
ed was  an  English  saddle,  embroidered  on  the  morocco 
seat  in  crimson  silk,  and  furnished  with  shining  steel 
stirrups.  What  he  had  was  the  framework  of  a  Mexi- 
can saddle,  covered  with  rawhide,  and  cushioned  with 
a  blanket ;  the  stirrups  were  Mexican  too,  and  clumsily 
fashioned  out  of  wood.  The  boys  were  always  talking 
about  getting  their  father  to  get  them  a  pad,  but  they 
never  did  it,  and  they  managed  as  they  could  with  the 
saddle  they  had.  For  the  most  part  they  preferred  to 
ride  the  pony  barebacked,  for  then  they  could  ride  him 
double,  and  when  they  first  got  him  they  all  wanted  to 
ride  him  so  much  that  they  had  to  ride  him  double. 
They  kept  him  going  the  whole  day  long ;  but  after 
a  while  they  calmed  down  enough  to  take  him  one  at  a 
time,  and  to  let  him  have  a  chance  for  his  meals. 

They  had  no  regular  stable,  and  the  father  left  the 
boys  to  fit  part  of  the  cow-shed  up  for  the  pony,  which 
they  did  by  throwing  part  of  the  hen-coop  open  into  it. 
The  pigeon-cots  were  just  over  his  head,  and  he  never 
could  have  complained  of  being  lonesome.  At  first 
everybody  wanted  to  feed  him  as  well  as  ride  him,  and 
if  he  had  been  allowed  time  for  it  he  might  have  eaten 
himself  to  death,  or  if  he  had  not  always  tried  to  bite 
you  or  kick  you  when  you  came  in  with  his  corn.  After 
a  while  the  boys  got  so  they  forgot  him,  and  nobody 
wanted  to  go  out  and  feed  the  pony,  especially  after 
dark ;  but  he  knew  how  to  take  care  of  himself,  and 
when  he  had  eaten  up  everything  there  was  in  the  cow- 
shed he  would  break  out  and  eat  up  everything  there 
was  in  the  yard. 

The  boys  got  lots  of  good  out  of  him.  When  you 
were  once  on  his  back  you  were  pretty  safe,  for  he  was 


146  a  boy's  town. 

so  lazy  that  lie  would  not  think  of  running  away,  and 
there  was  no  danger  unless  he  bounced  you  off  when 
he  trotted ;  he  had  a  hard  trot.  The  boys  wanted  to 
ride  him  standing  up,  like  circus-actors,  and  the  pony 
did  not  mind,  but  the  boys  could  not  stay  on,  though 
they  practised  a  good  deal,  turn  about,  when  the  other 
fellows  were  riding  their  horses,  standing  up,  on  the 
Commons.  He  was  not  of  much  more  use  in  Indian 
fights,  for  he  could  seldom  be  lashed  into  a  gallop,  and 
a  pony  that  proposed  to  walk  through  an  Indian  fight 
was  ridiculous.  Still,  with  the  help  of  imagination,  my 
boy  employed  him  in  some  scenes  of  wild  Arab  life, 
and  hurled  the  Moorish  javelin  from  him  in  mid-career, 
when  the  pony  was  flying  along  at  the  mad  pace  of  a 
canal-boat.  The  pony  early  gave  the  boys  to  under- 
stand that  they  could  get  very  little  out  of  him  in  the 
way  of  herding  the  family  cow.  He  would  let  them 
ride  him  to  the  pasture,  and  he  would  keep  up  with 
the  cow  on  the  way  home,  when  she  walked,  but  if  they 
wanted  anything  more  than  that  they  must  get  some 
other  pony.  They  tried  to  use  him  in  carrying  papers, 
but  the  subscribers  objected  to  having  him  ridden  up 
to  their  front  doors  over  the  sidewalk,  and  they  had  to 
give  it  up. 

When  he  became  an  old  story,  and  there  was  no  com- 
petition for  him  among  the  brothers,  my  boy  sometimes 
took  him  into  the  woods,  and  rode  him  in  the  wander- 
ing bridle-paths,  with  a  thrilling  sense  of  adventure. 
He  did  not  like  to  be  alone  there,  and  he  oftener  had 
the  company  of  a  boy  who  was  learning  the  trade  in 
his  father's  printing-office.  This  boy  was  just  between 
him  and  his  elder  brother  in  age,  and  he  was  the  good 
comrade  of  both;  all  the  family  loved  him,  and  made 


PETS.  147 

him  one  of  them,  and  my  boy  was  fond  of  him  because 
they  had  some  tastes  in  common  that  were  not  very 
common  among  the  other  boys.  They  liked  the  same 
books,  and  they  both  began  to  write  historical  romances. 
My  boy's  romance  was  founded  on  facts  of  the  Con- 
quest of  Granada,  which  he  had  read  of  again  and 
again  in  Washington  Irving,  with  a  passionate  pity  for 
the  Moors,  and  yet  with  pride  in  the  grave  and  noble 
Spaniards.  He  would  have  given  almost  anything  to 
be  a  Spaniard,  and  he  lived  in  a  dream  of  some  day 
sallying  out  upon  the  Vega  before  Granada,  in  silk  and 
steel,  with  an  Arabian  charger  under  him  that  champed 
its  bit.  In  the  meantime  he  did  what  he  could  with 
the  family  pony,  and  he  had  long  rides  in  the  woods 
with  the  other  boy,  who  used  to  get  his  father's  horse 
when  he  was  not  using  it  on  Sunday,  and  race  with  him 
through  the  dangling  wild  grape  -  vines  and  pawpaw 
thickets,  and  over  the  reedy  levels  of  the  river,  their 
hearts  both  bounding  with  the  same  high  hopes  of  tf 
world  that  could  never  come  true. 


X.TIL 

GTTNS   AND   GUNNING. 

All  round  the  Boy's  Town  stood  the  forest,  with  the 
trees  that  must  have  been  well  grown  when  Mad  An- 
thony Wayne  drove  the  Indians  from  their  shadow  for- 
>'  ever.  The  white  people  had  hewn  space  for  their  streets 
and  houses,  for  their  fields  and  farmsteads,  out  of  the 
woods,  but  where  the  woods  had  been  left  they  were 
of  immemorial  age.  They  were  not  very  dense,  and  the 
timber  was  not  very  heavy ;  the  trees  stood  more  like 
trees  in  a  park  than  trees  in  a  forest ;  there  was  little 
or  no  undergrowth,  except  here  and  there  a  pawpaw 
thicket ;  and  there  were  sometimes  grassy  spaces  be- 
tween them,  where  the  may-apples  pitched  their  pretty 
tents  in  the  spring.  Perhaps,  at  no  very  great  distance 
of  time,  it  had  been  a  prairie  country,  with  those  wide 
savannahs  of  waving  grass  that  took  the  eyes  of  the 
first-comers  in  the  Ohio  wilderness  with  an  image  of 
Nature  long  tamed  to  the  hand  of  man.  But  this  is 
merely  my  conjecture,  and  what  I  know  does  not  bear 
me  out  in  it ;  for  the  wall  of  forest  that  enclosed  the 
Boy's  Town  was  without  a  break  except  where  the  axe 
had  made  it.  At  some  points  it  was  nearer  and  at  some 
farther ;  but,  nearer  or  farther,  the  forest  encompassed 
the  town,  and  it  called  the  boys  born  within  its  circuit, 
as  the  sea  calls  the  boys  born  by  its  shore,  with  myste- 
rious, alluring  voices,  kindling  the  blood,  taking  the  soul 


GUNS   AND    GUNNING.  149 

with  love  for  its  strangeness.  There  was  not  a  boy  in  the 
Boy's  Town  who  would  not  gladly  have  turned  from  the 
town  and  lived  in  the  woods  if  his  mother  had  let  him ; 
and  in  every  vague  plan  of  running  off  the  forest  had 
its  place  as  a  city  of  refuge  from  pursuit  and  recapture. 
The  pioneer  days  were  still  so  close  to  those  times  that 
the  love  of  solitary  adventure  which  took  the  boys'  fa- 
thers into  the  sylvan  wastes  of  the  great  West  might 
well  have  burned  in  the  boys'  hearts ;  and  if  their  ideal 
of  life  was  the  free  life  of  the  woods,  no  doubt  it  was 
because  their  near  ancestors  had  lived  it.  At  any  rate, 
that  was  their  ideal,  and  they  were  always  talking  among 
themselves  of  how  they  would  go  farther  West  when 
they  grew  up,  and  be  trappers  and  hunters.  I  do  not 
remember  any  boy  but  one  who  meant  to  be  a  sailor ; 
they  lived  too  hopelessly  far  from  the  sea ;  and  I  dare 
say  the  boy  who  invented  the  marine-engine  governor, 
and  who  wished  to  be  a  pirate,  would  just  as  soon  have 
been  a  bandit  of  the  Osage.'  In  those  days  Oregon  had 
just  been  opened  to  settlers,  and  the  boys  all  wanted  to 
go  and  live  in  Oregon,  where  you  could  stand  in  your 
door  and  shoot  deer  and  wild  turkey,  while  a  salmon 
big  enough  to  pull  you  in  was  tugging  away  at  the  line 
you  had  set  in  the  river  that  ran  before  the  log-cabin. 

If  they  could,  the  boys  would  rather  have  been  In- 
dians than  anything  else,  but,  as  there  was  really  no 
hope  of  this  whatever,  they  were  willing  to  be  settlers, 
and  fight  the  Indians.  They  had  rather  a  mixed  mind 
about  them  in  the  meantime,  but  perhaps  they  were  not 
unlike  other  idolaters  in  both  fearing  and  adoring  their 
idols ;  perhaps  they  came  pretty  near  being  Indians  in 
that,  and  certainly  they  came  nearer  than  they  knew. 
When  they  played  war,  and  the  war  was  between  the 


150  A   BOY'S   TOWN. 

whites  and  the  Indians,  it  was  almost  as  low  a  thing  to 
be  white  as  it  was  to  be  British  when  there  were  Amer- 
icans on  the  other  side ;  in  either  case  you  had  to  be 
beaten.  The  boys  lived  in  the  desire,  if  not  the  hope, 
I  of  some  time  seeing  an  Indian,  and  they  made  the  most 
of  the  Indians  in  the  circus,  whom  they  knew  to  be  just 
white  men  dressed  up ;  but  none  of  them  dreamed 
that  what  really  happened  one  day  could  ever  happen. 
This  was  at  the  arrival  of  several  canal -boat  loads 
of  genuine  Indians  from  the  Wyandot  Reservation 
in  the  northwestern  part  of  the  state,  on  their  way 
to  new  lands  beyond  the  Mississippi.  The  boys'  fa- 
thers must  have  known  that  these  Indians  were  coming, 
but  it  just  shows  how  stupid  the  most  of  fathers  are, 
that  they  never  told  the  boys  about  it.  All  at  once 
there  the  Indians  were,  as  if  the  canal-boats  had  dropped 
with  them  out  of  heaven.  There  they  were,  crowding 
the  decks,  in  their  blankets  and  moccasins,  braves  and 
squaws  and  pappooses,  standing  about  or  squatting  in 
groups,  not  saying  anything,  and  looking  exactly  like 
the  pictures.  The  squaws  had  the  pappooses  on  their 
backs,  and  the  men  and  boys  had  bows  and  arrows  in 
their  hands ;  and  as  soon  as  the  boats  landed  the  In- 
dians, all  except  the  squaws  and  pappooses,  came  ashore, 
and  went  up  to  the  court-house  yard,  and  began  to  shoot 
with  their  bows  and  arrows.  It  almost  made  the  boys 
crazy. 

Of  course  they  would  have  liked  to  have  the  Indians 
shoot  at  birds,  or  some  game,  but  they  were  mighty 
glad  to  have  them  shoot  at  cents  and  bits  and  quarters 
that  anybody  could  stick  up  in  the  ground.  The  In- 
dians would  all  shoot  at  the  mark  till  some  one  hit  it,  and 
the  one  who  hit  it  had  the  money,  whatever  it  was.    The 


"ALL  AT  ONCE  THERE  THE  INDIANS  WEKE." 


GUNS   AND   GUNNING.  151 

boys  ran  and  brought  back  the  arrows ;  and  they  were 
so  proud  to  do  this  that  I  wonder  they  lived  through  it. 
My  boy  was  too  bashful  to  bring  the  Indians  their  ar- 
rows ;  he  could  only  stand  apart  and  long  to  approach 
the  filthy  savages,  whom  he  revered ;  to  have  touched 
the  border  of  one  of  their  blankets  would  have  been  too 
much.  Some  of  them  were  rather  handsome,  and  two 
or  three  of  the  Indian  boys  were  so  pretty  that  the  Boy's 
Town  boys  said  they  were  girls.  They  were  of  all  ages, 
from  old,  withered  men  to  children  of  six  or  seven,  but 
they  were  all  alike  grave  and  unsmiling ;  the  old  men 
were  not  a  whit  more  dignified  than  the  children,  and 
the  children  did  not  enter  into  their  sport  with  more 
zeal  and  ardor  than  the  wrinkled  sages  who  shared  it. 
In  fact  they  were,  old  and  young  alike,  savages,  and 
the  boys  who  looked  on  and  envied  them  were  savages 
in  their  ideal  of  a  world  where  people  spent  their  lives 
in  hunting  and  fishing  and  ranging  the  woods,  and  never 
grew  up  into  the  toils  and  cares  that  can  alone  make  men 
of  boys.  They  wished  to  escape  these,  as  many  foolish 
persons  do  among  civilized  nations,  and  they  thought 
if  they  could  only  escape  them  they  would  be  happy ; 
they  did  not  know  that  they  would  be  merely  savage, 
and  that  the  great  difference  between  a  savage  and  a 
civilized  man  is  work.  They  would  all  have  been  will- 
ing to  follow  these  Indians  away  into  the  far  West, 
where  they  were  going,  and  be  barbarians  for  the  rest 
of  their  days ;  and  the  wonder  is  that  some  of  the  fel- 
lows did  not  try  it.  After  the  red  men  had  flitted  away 
like  red  leaves  their  memory  remained  with  the  boys, 
and  a  plague  of  bows  and  arrows  raged  among  them, 
and  it  was  a  good  while  before  they  calmed  down  to 
their  old  desire  of  having  a  gun. 


152  A  boy's  town. 

But  they  came  back  to  that  at  last,  for  that  "was  the 
normal  desire  of  every  boy  in  the  Boy's  Town  who  was 
not  a  girl-boy,  and  there  were  mighty  few  girl-boys  there. 
Up  to  a  certain  point,  a  pistol  would  do,  especially  if  you 
had  bullet-moulds,  and  could  run  bullets  to  shoot  out  of 
it ;  only  your  mother  would  be  sure  to  see  you  running 
them,  and  just  as  likely  as  not  would  be  so  scared  that 
she  would  say  you  must  not  shoot  bullets.  Then  you 
Avould  have  to  use  buckshot,  if  you  could  get  them  any- 
where near  the  right  size,  or  small  marbles ;  but  a  pis- 
tol was  always  a  makeshift,  and  you  never  could  hit  any- 
thing with  it,  not  even  a  board  fence  ;  it  always  kicked, 
or  burst,  or  something.  Very  few  boys  ever  came  to 
have  a  gun,  though  they  all  expected  to  have  one.  But 
seven  or  eight  boys  would  go  hunting  with  one  shot- 
gun, and  take  turn-about  shooting ;  some  of  the  little 
fellows  never  got  to  shoot  at  all,  but  they  could  run  and 
see  whether  the  big  boys  had  hit  anything  when  they 
fired,  and  that  was  something.  This  was  my  boy's  priv- 
ilege for  a  long  time  before  he  had  a  gun  of  his  own, 
and  he  went  patiently  with  his  elder  brother,  and  never 
expected  to  fire  the  gun,  except,  perhaps,  to  shoot  the 
load  off  before  they  got  back  to  town ;  they  were  not 
allowed  to  bring  the  gun  home  loaded.  It  was  a  gun 
that  was  pretty  safe  for  anything  in  front  of  it,  but  you 
never  could  tell  what  it  was  going  to  do.  It  began  by 
being  simply  an  old  gun-barrel,  which  my  boy's  brother 
bought  of  another  boy  who  was  sick  of  it  for  a  fip,  as 
the  half-real  piece  was  called,  and  it  went  on  till  it  got 
a  lock  from  one  gunsmith  and  a  stock  from  another,  and 
was  a  complete  gun„  But  this  took  time ;  perhaps  a 
month ;  for  the  gunsmiths  would  only  work  at  it  in 
their  leisure ;    they  were   delinquent  subscribers,   and 


GUNS   AND   GUNNING.  153 

they  did  it  in  part  pay  for  their  papers.  When  they 
got  through  with  it  my  boy's  brother  made  himself  a 
ramrod  out  of  a  straight  piece  of  hickory,  or  at  least  as 
straight  as  the  gun-barrel,  which  was  rather  sway-backed, 
and  had  a  little  twist  to  one  side,  so  that  one  of  the  jour 
printers  said  it  was  a  first-rate  gun  to  shoot  round  a  cor- 
ner with.  Then  he  made  himself  a  powder-flask  out  of 
an  ox-horn  that  he  got  and  boiled  till  it  was  soft  (it 
smelt  the  whole  house  up),  and  then  scraped  thin  with 
a  piece  of  glass ;  it  hung  at  his  side  ;  and  he  carried  his 
shot  in  his  pantaloons  pocket.  He  went  hunting  with 
this  gun  for  a  good  many  years,  but  he  had  never  shot 
anything  with  it,  when  his  uncle  gave  him  a  smooth- 
bore rifle,  and  he  in  turn  gave  his  gun  to  my  boy,  who 
must  then  have  been  nearly  ten  years  old.  It  seemed 
to  him  that  he  was  quite  old  enough  to  have  a  gun ; 
but  he  was  mortified  the  very  next  morning  after  he  got 
it  by  a  citizen  who  thought  differently.  He  had  risen 
at  daybreak  to  go  out  and  shoot  kildees  on  the  Common, 
and  he  was  hurrying  along  with  his  gun  on  his  shoul- 
der when  the  citizen  stopped  him  and  asked  him  what 
he  was  going  to  do  with  that  gun.  He  said  to  shoot 
kildees,  and  he  added  that  it  was  his  gun.  This  seemed 
to  surprise  the  citizen  even  more  than  the  boy  could 
have  wished.  He  asked  him  if  he  did  not  think  he 
was  a  pretty  small  boy  to  have  a  gun ;  and  he  took  the 
gun  from  him,  and  examined  it  thoughtfully,  and  then 
handed  it  back  to  the  boy,  who  felt  himself  getting 
smaller  all  the  time.  The  man  went  his  way  without 
saying  anything  more,  but  his  behavior  was  somehow 
so  sarcastic  that  the  boy  had  no  pleasure  in  his  sport 
that  morning ;  partly,  perhaps,  because  he  found  no 
kildees  to  shoot  at  on  the  Common.     He  only  fired  off 


154  A  boy's  town. 

his  gun  once  or  twice  at  a  fence,  and  then  he  sneaked 
home  with  it  through  alleys  and  by-ways,  and  whenever 
he  met  a  person  he  hurried  by  for  fear  the  person  would 
find  him  too  small  to  have  a  gun. 

Afterwards  he  came  to  have  a  bolder  spirit  about  it, 
and  he  went  hunting  with  it  a  good  deal.  It  was  a  very 
curious  kind  of  gun ;  you  had  to  snap  a  good  many 
caps  on  it,  sometimes,  before  the  load  would  go  off ; 
and  sometimes  it  would  hang  fire,  and  then  seem  to 
recollect  itself,  and  go  off,  maybe,  just  when  you  were 
going  to  take  it  down  from  your  shoulder.  The  barrel 
was  so  crooked  that  it  could  not  shoot  straight,  but 
this  was  not  the  only  reason  why  the  boy  never  hit  any- 
thing with  it.  He  could  not  shut  his  left  eye  and  keep 
his  right  eye  open ;  so  he  had  to  take  aim  with  both 
eyes,  or  else  with  the  left  eye,  which  was  worse  yet, 
till  one  day  when  he  was  playing  shinny  (or  hockey) 
at  school,  and  got  a  blow  over  his  left  eye  from  a  shinny- 
stick.  At  first  he  thought  his  eye  was  put  out ;  he 
could  not  see  for  the  blood  that  poured  into  it  from  the 
cut  above  it.  He  ran  homeward  wild  with  fear,  but  on 
the  way  he  stopped  at  a  pump  to  wash  away  the  blood, 
and  then  he  found  his  eye  was  safe.  It  suddenly  came 
into  his  mind  to  try  if  he  could  not  shut  that  eye  now, 
and  keep  the  right  one  open.  He  found  that  he  could 
do  it  perfectly  ;  by  help  of  his  handkerchief,  he  stanched 
his  wound,  and  made  himself  presentable,  with  the  glassy 
pool  before  the  pump  for  a  mirror,  and  went  joyfully 
back  to  school.  He  kept  trying  his  left  eye,  to  make 
sure  it  had  not  lost  its  new-found  art,  and  as  soon  as 
school  was  out  he  hurried  home  to  share  the  joyful 
news  with  his  family.  He  went  hunting  the  very  next 
Saturday,  and  at  the  first  shot  he  killed  a  bird.     It  was 


GUNS   AND   GUNNING.  155 

a  suicidal  sap-sucker,  which  had  suffered  him  to  steal 
upon  it  so  close  that  it  could  not  escape  even  the  vaga- 
ries of  that  wandering  gun-barrel,  and  was  blown  into 
such  small  pieces  that  the  boy  could  bring  only  a  few 
feathers  of  it  away.  In  the  evening,  when  his  father 
came  home,  he  showed  him  these  trophies  of  the  chase, 
and  boasted  of  his  exploit  with  the  minutest  detail. 
His  father  asked  him  whether  he  had  expected  to  eat 
this  sap-sucker,  if  he  could  have  got  enough  of  it  to- 
gether. He  said  no,  sap-suckers  were  not  good  to  eat. 
"  Then  you  took  its  poor  little  life  merely  for  the  pleas- 
ure of  killing  it,"  said  the  father.  "  Was  it  a  great 
pleasure  to  see  it  die  ?"  The  boy  hung  his  head  in 
shame  and  silence ;  it  seemed  to  him  that  he  would 
never  go  hunting  again.  Of  course  he  did  go  hunting 
often  afterwards,  but  his  brother  and  he  kept  faith- 
fully to.  the  rule  of  never  killing  anything  that  they  did 
not  want  to  eat.  To  be  sure,  they  gave  themselves  a 
wide  range ;  they  were  willing  to  eat  almost  anything 
that  they  could  shoot,  even  blackbirds,  which  were  so 
abundant  and  so  easy  to  shoot.  But  there  were  some 
things  which  they  would  have  thought  it  not  only  wan- 
ton but  wicked  to  kill,  like  turtle-doves,  which  they 
somehow  believed  were  sacred,  because  they  were  the 
symbols  of  the  Holy  Ghost ;  it  was  quite  their  own  no- 
tion to  hold  them  sacred.  They  would  not  kill  rob- 
ins either,  because  robins  were  hallowed  by  poetry,  and 
they  kept  about  the  house,  and  were  almost  tame,  so 
that  it  seemed  a  shame  to  shoot  them.  They  were  very 
plentiful,  and  so  were  the  turtle-doves,  which  used  to 
light  on  the  basin-bank,  and  pick  up  the  grain  scat- 
tered there  from  the  boats  and  wagons.  One  of  the 
apprentices  in  the  printing-office  kept  a  shot-gun  loaded 


156  A  boy's  TOWN. 

beside  the  press  while  he  was  rolling,  and  whenever  he 
caught  the  soft  twitter  that  the  doves  make  with  their 
wings,  he  rushed  out  with  his  gun  and  knocked  over 
two  or  three  of  them.  He  was  a  good  shot,  and  could 
nearly  always  get  them  in  range.  When  he  brought 
them  back,  it  seemed  to  my  boy  that  he  had  committed 
the  unpardonable  sin,  and  that  something  awful  would 
surely  happen  to  him.  But  he  just  kept  on  rolling  the 
forms  of  type  and  exchanging  insults  with  the  press- 
man ;  and  at  the  first  faint  twitter  of  doves'  wings  he 
would  be  off  again. 

My  boy  and  his  brother  made  a  fine  distinction  be- 
tween turtle-doves  and  wild  pigeons ;  they  would  have 
killed  wild  pigeons  if  they  had  got  a  chance,  though 
you  could  not  tell  them  from  turtle-doves  except  by 
their  size  and  the  sound  they  made  with  their  wings. 
But  there  were  not  many  pigeons  in  the  woods  around 
the  Boy's  Town,  and  they  were  very  shy.  There  were 
snipe  along  the  river,  and  flocks  of  kildees  on  the 
Commons,  but  the  bird  that  was  mostly  killed  by  these 
boys  was  the  yellowhammer.  They  distinguished, 
again,  in  its  case ;  and  decided  that  it  was  not  a  wood- 
pecker, and  might  be  killed  ;  sometimes  they  thought 
that  woodpeckers  were  so  nearly  yellowhammers  that 
they  might  be  killed,  but  they  had  never  heard  of  any 
one's  eating  a  woodpecker,  and  so  they  could  not  quite 
bring  themselves  to  it.  There  were  said  to  be  squirrels 
in  the  hickory  woods  near  the  Poor-House,  but  that  was 
a  great  way  off  for  my  boy ;  besides  the  squirrels,  there 
was  a  cross  bull  in  those  woods,  and  sometimes  Solomon 
Whistler  passed  through  them  on  his  way  to  or  from 
the  Poor-House ;  so  my  boy  never  hunted  squirrels. 
Sometimes  he  went  with  his  brother  for  rabbits,  which 


GUNS   AND    GUNNING.  157 

you  could  track  through  the  corn-fields  in  a  light  snow, 
and  sometimes,  if  they  did  not  turn  out  to  be  cats,  you 
could  get  a  shot  at  them.  Now  and  then  there  were 
quail  in  the  wheat-stubble,  and  there  were  meadow-larks 
in  the  pastures,  but  they  were  very  wild. 

After  all,  yellowhammers  were  the  chief  reliance  in 
the  chase  ;  they  were  pre-occupied,  unsuspecting  birds, 
and  lit  on  fence  rails  and  dead  trees,  so  that  they  were 
pretty  easy  to  shoot.  If  you  could  bring  home  a  yel- 
lowhammer  you  felt  that  you  had  something  to  show 
for  your  long  day's  tramp  through  the  woods  and  fields, 
and  for  the  five  cents'  worth  of  powder  and  five  cents' 
worth  of  shot  that  you  had  fired  off  at  other  game. 
Sometimes  you  just  fired  it  off  at  mullein-stalks,  or 
barns,  or  anything  you  came  to.  There  were  a  good 
many  things  you  could  do  with  a  gun ;  you  could  fire 
your  ramrod  out  of  it,  and  see  it  sail  through  the  air ; 
you  could  fill  the  muzzle  up  with  water,  on  top  of  a 
charge,  and  send  the  water  in  a  straight  column  at  a 
fence.  The  boys  all  believed  that  you  could  fire  that 
column  of  water  right  through  a  man,  and  they  always 
wanted  to  try  whether  it  would  go  through  a  cow,  but 
they  were  afraid  the  owner  of  the  cow  would  find  it 
out.  There  was  a  good  deal  of  pleasure  in  cleaning 
your  gun  when  it  got  so  foul  that  your  ramrod  stuck 
in  it  and  you  could  hardly  get  it  out.  You  poured  hot 
water  into  the  muzzle  and  blew  it  through  the  nipple, 
till  it  began  to  show  clear ;  then  you  wiped  it  dry  with 
soft  rags  wound  on  your  gun-screw,  and  then  oiled  it 
with  greasy  tow.  Sometimes  the  tow  would  get  loose 
from  the  screw,  and  stay  in  the  barrel,  and  then  you 
would  have  to  pick  enough  powder  in  at  the  nipple  to 
blow  it  out.     Of  course  I  am  talking  of  the  old  muzzle- 


158  A  BOY'S   TOWN. 

loading  shot-gun,  which  I  dare  say  the  boys  never  use 
nowadays. 

But  the  great  pleasure  of  all,  in  hunting,  was  getting 
home  tired  and  footsore  in  the  evening,  and  smelling 
the  supper  almost  as  soon  as  you  came  in  sight  of  the 
house.  There  was  nearly  always  hot  biscuit  for  supper, 
with  steak,  and  with  coffee  such  as  nobody  but  a  boy's 
mother  ever  knew  how  to  make ;  and  just  as  likely  as 
not  there  was  some  kind  of  preserves;  at  any  rate,  there 
was  apple-butter.  You  could  hardly  take  the  time  to 
wash  the  powder-grime  off  your  hands  and  face  before 
you  rushed  to  the  table ;  and  if  you  had  brought  home 
a  yellowhammer  you  left  it  with  your  gun  on  the  back 
porch,  and  perhaps  the  cat  got  it  and  saved  you  the 
trouble  of  cleaning  it.  A  cat  can  clean  a  bird  a  good 
deal  quicker  than  a  boy  can,  and  she  does  not  hate  to 
do  it  half  as  badly. 

Next  to  the  pleasure  of  getting  home  from  hunting 
late,  was  the  pleasure  of  starting  early,  as  my  boy  and 
his  brother  sometimes  did,  to  shoot  ducks  on  the  Little 
Reservoir  in  the  fall.  His  brother  had  an  alarm-clock, 
which  he  set  at  about  four,  and  he  was  up  the  instant 
it  rang,  and  pulling  my  boy  out  of  bed,  where  he  would 
rather  have  stayed  than  shot  the  largest  mallard  duck 
in  the  world.  They  raked  the  ashes  off  the  bed  of  coals 
in  the  fireplace,  and  while  the  embers  ticked  and  bristled, 
and  flung  out  little  showers  of  sparks,  they  hustled  on 
their  clothes,  and  ran  down  the  back  stairs  into  the  yard 
with  their  guns.  Tip,  the  dog,  was  already  waiting  for 
them  there,  for  he  seemed  to  know  they  were  going 
that  morning,  and  he  began  whimpering  for  joy,  and 
twisting  himself  sideways  up  against  them,  and  nearly 
waggirg  his  tail  off ;  and  licking  their  hands  and  faces, 


GCJNS   AND   GUNNING.  159 

and  kissing  their  guns  all  over ;  he  was  about  crazy. 
When  they  started,  he  knew  where  they  were  going,  and 
he  rushed  ahead  through  the  silent  little  sleeping  town, 
and  led  the  way  across  the  wide  Commons,  where  the 
cows  lay  in  dim  bulks  on  the  grass,  and  the  geese  waddled 
out  of  his  way  with  wild  clamorous  cries,  till  they  came 
in  sight  of  the  Reservoir.  Then  Tip  fell  back  with  my 
boy  and  let  the  elder  brother  go  ahead,  for  he  always 
had  a  right  to  the  first  shot ;  and  while  he  dodged  down 
behind  the  bank,  and  crept  along  to  the  place  where  the 
ducks  usually  were,  my  boy  kept  a  hold  on  Tip's  col- 
lar, and  took  in  the  beautiful  mystery  of  the  early 
morning.  The  place  so  familiar  by  day  was  estranged 
to  his  eyes  in  that  pale  light,  and  he  was  glad  of 
old  Tip's  company,  for  it  seemed  a  time  when  there 
might  very  well  be  ghosts  about.  The  water  stretched 
a  sheet  of  smooth,  gray  silver,  with  little  tufts  of  mist 
on  its  surface,  and  through  these  at  last  he  could  see 
the  ducks  softly  gliding  to  and  fro,  and  he  could  catch 
some  dreamy  sound  from  them.  His  heart  stood  still 
and  then  jumped  wildly  in  his  breast,  as  the  still  air 
was  startled  with  the  rush  of  wings,  and  the  water  broke 
with  the  plunge  of  other  flocks  arriving.  Then  he  be* 
gan  to  make  those  bets  with  himself  that  a  boy  hopes 
he  will  lose :  he  bet  that  his  brother  would  not  hit  any 
of  them ;  he  bet  that  he  did  not  even  see  them  ;  he  bet 
that  if  he  did  see  them  and  got  a  shot  at  them,  they 
would  not  come  back  so  that  he  could  get  a  chance 
himself  to  kill  any.  It  seemed  to  him  that  he  had  to 
wait  an  hour,  and  just  when  he  was  going  to  hollo,  and 
tell  his  brother  where  the  ducks  were,  the  old  smooth- 
bore sent  out  a  red  flash  and  a  white  puff  before  he  heard 
the  report ;  Tip  tore  loose  from  his  grasp ;  and  he  heard 


160  A    BOY'S   TOWN. 

the  splashing  rise  of  the  ducks,  and  the  hurtling  rush 
of  their  wings ;  and  he  ran  forward,  yelling,  "  How 
many  did  you  hit  ?  Where  are  they  ?  Where  are  you  ? 
Are  they  coming  back  ?  It's  my  turn  now  !"  and  making 
an  outcry  that  would  have  frightened  away  a  fleet  of 
ironclads,  but  much  less  a  flock  of  ducks. 

One  shot  always  ended  the  morning's  sport,  and  there 
were  always  good  reasons  why  this  shot  never  killed 
anything. 


XIV. 

FORAGING. 

The  foraging  began  with  the  first  relenting  days  of 
winter,  which  usually  came  in  February.  Then  the 
boys  began  to  go  to  the  woods  to  get  sugar-water,  as 
they  called  the  maple  sap,  and  they  gave  whole  Satur- 
days to  it  as  long  as  the  sap  would  run.  It  took  at 
least  five  or  six  boys  to  go  for  sugar-water,  and  they 
always  had  to  get  a  boy  whose  father  had  an  auger  to 
come  along,  so  as  to  have  something  to  bore  the  trees 
with.  On  their  way  to  the  woods  they  had  to  stop  at 
an  elder  thicket  to  get  elder-wood  to  make  spiles  of, 
and  at  a  straw  pile  to  cut  straws  to  suck  the  sap  through, 
if  the  spiles  would  not  work.  They  always  brought 
lots  of  tin  buckets  to  take  the  sap  home  in,  and  the  big 
boys  made  the  little  fellows  carry  these,  for  they  had 
to  keep  their  own  hands  free  to  whittle  the  elder  sticks 
into  the  form  of  spouts,  and  to  push  the  pith  out  and 
make  them  hollow.  They  talked  loudly  and  all  at  once, 
and  they  ran  a  good  deal  of  the  way,  from  the  excite- 
ment. If  it  was  a  good  sugar-day,  there  were  patches 
of  snow  still  in  the  fence  corners  and  shady  places, 
which  they  searched  for  rabbit-tracks;  but  the  air  was 
so  warm  that  they  wanted  to  take  their  shoes  off,  and 
begin  going  barefoot  at  once.  Overhead,  the  sky  was 
a  sort  of  pale,  milky  blue,  with  the  sun  burning  softly 
through  it,  and  casting  faint  shadows.     When  they  got 


162  A   BOY'S   TOWN. 

into  the  woods,  it  was  cooler,  and  there  were  more 
patches  of  snow,  with  bird-tracks  and  squirrel-tracks  in 
them.  They  could  hear  the  blue-jays  snarling  at  one 
another,  and  the  yellowhammer  chuckling;  on  some 
dead  tree  a  redheaded  woodpecker  hammered  noisily, 
and  if  the  boys  had  only  had  a  gun  with  them  they  could 
have  killed  lots  of  things.  Now  and  then  they  passed 
near  some  woodchoppers,  whose  axes  made  a  pleasant 
sound,  without  frightening  any  of  the  wild  things,  they 
had  got  so  used  to  them;  sometimes  the  boys  heard 
the  long  hollow  crash  of  a  tree  they  were  felling.  But 
all  the  time  they  kept  looking  out  for  a  good  sugar- 
tree,  and  when  they  saw  a  maple  stained  black  from 
the  branches  down  with  the  sap  running  from  the  little 
holes  that  the  sap-suckers  had  made,  they  burst  into  a 
shout,  and  dashed  forward,  and  the  fellow  with  the  au- 
ger began  to  bore  away,  while  the  other  fellows  stood 
round  and  told  him  how,  and  wanted  to  make  him  let 
them  do  it.  Up  and  down  the  tree  there  was  a  soft 
murmur  from  the  bees  that  had  found  it  out  before  the 
boys,  and  every  now  and  then  they  wove  through  the 
air  the  straight  lines  of  their  coming  and  going,  and 
made  the  fellows  wish  they  could  find  a  bee-tree.  But 
for  the  present  these  were  intent  upon  the  sugar-tree, 
and  kept  hurrying  up  the  boy  with  the  auger.  When 
he  had  bored  in  deep  enough,  they  tried  to  fit  a  spile 
to  the  hole,  but  it  was  nearly  always  crooked  and  too 
big,  or  else  it  pointed  downward  and  the  water  would 
not  run  up  through  the  spile.  Then  some  of  them  got 
out  their  straws,  and  began  to  suck  the  sap  up  from  the 
hole  through  them,  and  to  quarrel  and  push,  till  they 
agreed  to  take  turn-about,  and  others  got  the  auger  and 
hunted  for  another  blackened  tree.     They  never  could 


FORAGING.  163 

get  their  spiles  to  work,  and  the  water  gathered  so  slowly 
in  the  holes  they  hored,  and  some  of  the  fellows  took 
such  long  turns,  that  it  was  very  little  fun.  They  tried 
to  get  some  good  out  of  the  small  holes  the  sap-suckers 
had  made,  but  there  were  only  a  few  drops  in  them, 
mixed  with  bark  and  moss.  If  it  had  not  been  for  the 
woodchoppers,  foraging  for  sugar-water  would  always 
have  been  a  failure  ;  but  one  of  them  was  pretty  sure  to 
come  up  with  his  axe  in  his  hand,  and  show  the  boys 
how  to  get  the  water.  He  would  choose  one  of  the 
roots  near  the  foot  of  the  tree,  and  chop  a  clean,  square 
hole  in  it ;  the  sap  flew  at  each  stroke  of  his  axe,  and 
it  rose  so  fast  in  the  well  he  made  that  the  thirstiest 
boy  could  not  keep  it  down,  and  three  or  four  boys, 
with  their  heads  jammed  tight  together  and  their  straws 
plunged  into  its  depths,  lay  stretched  upon  their  stom- 
achs and  drank  their  fill  at  once.  When  every  one  was 
satisfied,  or  as  nearly  satisfied  as  a  boy  can  ever  be,  they 
began  to  think  how  they  could  carry  some  of  the  sugar- 
water  home.  But  by  this  time  it  would  be  pretty  late 
in  the  afternoon ;  and  they  would  have  to  put  it  off  till 
some  other  day,  when  they  intended  to  bring  something 
to  dip  the  water  out  with ;  the  buckets  they  had  brought 
were  all  too  big.  Then,  if  they  could  get  enough,  they 
meant  to  boil  it  down  and  make  sugar-wax.  I  never 
knew  of  any  boys  who  did  so. 

The  next  thing  after  going  for  sugar-water  was  gath- 
ering may-apples,  as  they  called  the  fruit  of  the  man- 
drake in  that  country.  They  grew  to  their  full  size, 
nearly  as  large  as  a  pullet's  egg,  some  time  in  June, 
and  they  were  gathered  green,  and  carried  home  to  be 
ripened  in  the  cornmeal-barrel.  The  boys  usually  for- 
got about  them  before  they  were  ripe;  when  now  and 


164  a  boy's  town. 

then  one  was  remembered,  it  was  a  thin,  watery,  sour 
thing  at  the  best.  But  the  boys  gathered  them  every 
spring,  in  the  pleasant  open  woods  where  they  grew, 
just  beyond  the  densest  shade  of  the  trees,  among  the 
tall,  straggling  grasses ;  and  they  had  that  joyous  sense 
of  the  bounty  of  nature  in  hoarding  them  up  which  is 
one  of  the  sweetest  and  dearest  experiences  of  child- 
hood. Through  this  the  boy  comes  close  to  the  heart 
of  the  mother  of  us  all,  and  rejoices  in  the  wealth  she 
never  grudges  to  those  who  are  willing  to  be  merely 
rich  enough. 

There  were  not  many  wild  berries  in  the  country 
near  the  Boy's  Town,  or  what  seemed  near ;  but  some- 
times my  boy's  father  took  him  a  great  way  off  to  a 
region,  long  lost  from  the  map,  where  there  were  black- 
berries. The  swimming  lasted  so  late  into  September, 
however,  that  the  boys  began  to  go  for  nuts  almost  as 
soon  as  they  left  off  going  into  the  water.  They  began 
with  the  little  acorns  that  they  called  chinquepins,  and 
that  were  such  a  pretty  black,  streaked  upward  from 
the  cup  with  yellow,  that  they  gathered  them  half  for 
the  unconscious  pleasure  of  their  beauty.  They  were 
rather  bitter,  and  they  puckered  your  mouth ;  but  still 
you  ate  them.  They  were  easy  to  knock  off  the  low 
oaks  where  they  grew,  and  they  were  so  plentiful  that 
you  could  get  a  peck  of  them  in  no  time.  There  was 
no  need  of  anybody's  climbing  a  tree  to  shake  them ; 
but  one  day  the  boys  got  to  telling  what  they  would  do 
if  a  bear  came,  and  one  of  them  climbed  a  chinquepin- 
tree  to  show  how  he  would  get  out  on  such  a  small  limb 
that  the  bear  would  be  afraid  to  follow  him ;  and  he 
went  so  far  out  on  the  limb  that  it  broke  under  him. 
Perhaps  he  was  heavier  than  he  would  have  been  if  he 


FOBAGING.  165 

had  not  been  carrying  the  load  of  guilt  which  must 
burden  a  boy  who  is  playing  hookey.  At  any  rate,  he 
fell  to  the  ground,  and  lay  there  helpless  while  the  other 
boys  gathered  round  him,  and  shared  all  the  alarm  he 
felt  for  his  life.  His  despair  of  now  hiding  the  fact 
that  he  had  been  playing  hookey  was  his  own  affair, 
but  they  reasoned  with  him  that  the  offence  would  be 
overlooked  in  the  anxiety  which  his  disaster  must  arouse. 
He  was  prepared  to  make  the  most  of  this,  and  his 
groans  grew  louder  as  he  drew  near  home  in  the  arms 
of  the  boys  who  took  turns,  two  and  two,  in  carrying 
him  the  whole  long  way  from  Dayton  Lane,  with  a  ter- 
rified procession  of  alternates  behind  them.  These  all 
ran  as  soon  as  they  came  in  sight  of  his  house  and  left 
the  last  pair  to  deliver  him  to  his  mother.  They  never 
knew  whether  she  forgave  him  fully,  or  merely  waited 
till  he  got  well.  You  never  could  tell  how  a  boy's 
mother  was  going  to  act  in  any  given  case ;  mothers 
were  so  very  apt  to  act  differently. 

Eed  haws  came  a  little  before  chinquepins.  The  trees 
grew  mostly  by  the  First  Lock,  and  the  boys  gathered 
the  haws  when  they  came  out  from  swimming  in  the 
canal.  They  did  not  take  bags  to  gather  haws,  as  they 
did  chinquepins ;  the  fruit  was  not  thought  worthy  of 
that  honor ;  but  they  filled  their  pockets  with  them  and 
ate  them  on  the  way  home.  They  were  rather  nice, 
with  a  pleasant  taste  between  a  small  apple  and  a  rose 
seed-pod;  only  you  had  to  throw  most  of  them  away 
because  they  were  wormy.  Once  when  the  fellows  were 
gathering  haws  out  there  they  began  to  have  fun  with 
a  flock  of  turkeys,  especially  the  gobblers,  and  one  boy 
got  an  old  gobbler  to  following  him  while  he  walked 
slowly  backward,  and   teased  him.      The  other  boys 


166  A   BOY'S    TOWN. 

would  not  have  told  him  for  anything  when  they  saw 
him  backing  against  a  low  stump.  When  he  reached 
it,  his  head  went  down  and  his  heels  flew  into  the  air, 
and  then  the  gobbler  hopped  upon  him  and  began  to 
have  some  of  the  fun  himself.  The  boys  always  thought 
that  if  they  had  not  rushed  up  all  together  and  scared 
the  gobbler  off,  he  would  have  torn  the  boy  to  pieces, 
but  very  likely  he  would  not.  He  probably  intended 
just  to  have  fun  with  him. 

The  woods  were  pretty  full  of  the  kind  of  hickory- 
trees  called  pignuts,  and  the  boys  gathered  the  nuts, 
and  even  ate  their  small,  bitter  kernels ;  and  around 
the  Poor-House  woods  there  were  some  shag-barks,  but 
the  boys  did  not  go  for  them  because  of  the  bull  and 
the  crazy  people.  Their  great  and  constant  reliance  in 
foraging  was  the  abundance  of  black  walnuts  which 
grew  everywhere,  along  the  roads  and  on  the  river-banks, 
as  well  as  in  the  woods  and  the  pastures.  Long  before 
it  was  time  to  go  walnutting,  the  boys  began  knocking 
off  the  nuts  and  trying  whether  they  were  ripe  enough ; 
and  just  as  soon  as  the  kernels  began  to  fill  out,  the 
fellows  began  making  walnut  wagons.  I  do  not  know 
why  it  was  thought  necessary  to  have  a  wagon  to  gather 
walnuts,  but  I  know  that  it  was,  and  that  a  boy  had  to 
make  a  new  wagon  every  year.  No  boy's  walnut  wagon 
could  last  till  the  next  year  ;  it  did  very  well  if  it  lasted 
till  the  next  day.  He  had  to  make  it  nearly  all  with 
his  pocket-knife.  He  could  use  a  saw  to  block  the 
wheels  out  of  a  pine  board,  and  he  could  use  a  hatchet 
to  rough  off  the  corners  of  the  blocks,  but  he  had  to 
use  his  knife  to  give  them  any  sort  of  roundness,  and 
they  were  not  very  round  then  ;  they  were  apt  to  be 
oval  in  shape,  and  they  always  wabbled.     He  whittled 


FORAGING.  167 

the  axles  out  with  his  knife,  and  he  made  the  hubs  with 
it.  He  could  get  a  tongue  ready-made  if  he  used  a 
broom-handle  or  a  hoop-pole,  but  that  had  in  either  case 
to  be  whittled  so  it  could  be  fastened  to  the  wagon  ;  he 
even  bored  the  linchpin  holes  with  his  knife  if  he  could 
not  get  a  gimlet ;  and  if  he  could  not  get  an  auger,  he 
bored  the  holes  through  the  wheels  with  a  red-hot  poker, 
and  then  whittled  them  large  enough  with  his  knife. 
He  had  to  use  pine  for  nearly  everything,  because  any 
other  wood  was  too  hard  to  whittle ;  and  then  the  pine 
was  always  splitting.  It  split  in  the  axles  when  he  was 
making  the  linchpin  holes,  and  the  wheels  had  to  be 
kept  on  by  linchpins  that  were  tied  in  ;  the  wheels  them- 
selves split,  and  had  to  be  strengthened  by  slats  nailed 
across  the  rifts.  The  wagon-bed  was  a  candle-box  nailed 
to  the  axles,  and  that  kept  the  front-axle  tight,  so  that 
it  took  the  whole  width  of  a  street  to  turn  a  very  little 
wagon  in  without  upsetting. 

When  the  wagon  was  all  done,  the  boy  who  owned 
it  started  off  with  his  brothers,  or  some  other  boys  who 
had  no  wagon,  to  gather  walnuts.  He  started  early  in 
the  morning  of  some  bright  autumn  day  while  the  frost 
still  bearded  the  grass  in  the  back- yard,  and  bristled 
on  the  fence-tops  and  the  roof  of  the  wood-shed,  and 
hurried  off  to  the  woods  so  as  to  get  there  before  the 
other  boys  had  got  the  walnuts.  The  best  place  for 
them  was  in  some  woods-pasture  where  the  trees  stood 
free  of  one  another,  and  around  them,  in  among  the 
tall,  frosty  grass,  the  tumbled  nuts  lay  scattered  in 
groups  of  twos  and  threes,  or  fives,  some  still  yellowish- 
green  in  their  hulls,  and  some  black,  but  all  sending 
up  to  the  nostrils  of  the  delighted  boy  the  incense  of 
their  clean,  keen,  wild-woody  smell,  to  be  a  memory 


168  A   BOT's   TOWN. 

forever.  The  leaves  had  dropped  from  the  trees  over- 
head, and  the  branches  outlined  themselves  against  the 
blue  sky,  and  dangled  from  their  outer  stems  clusters 
of  the  unfallen  fruit,  as  large  as  oranges,  and  only  want- 
ing a  touch  to  send  them  plumping  down  into  the  grass 
■where  sometimes  their  fat  hulls  burst,  and  the  nuts  al- 
most leaped  into  the  boys'  hands.  The  boys  ran,  some 
of  them  to  gather  the  fallen  nuts,  and  others  to  get 
clubs  and  rocks  to  beat  them  from  the  trees ;  one  was 
sure  to  throw  off  his  jacket  and  kick  off  his  shoes  and 
climb  the  tree  to  shake  every  limb  where  a  walnut  was 
still  clinging.  When  they  had  got  them  all  heaped  up 
like  a  pile  of  grape-shot  at  the  foot  of  the  tree,  they  be- 
gan to  hull  them,  with  blows  of  a  stick,  or  with  stones,  and 
to  pick  the  nuts  from  the  hulls,  where  the  grubs  were 
battening  on  their  assured  ripeness,  and  to  toss  them 
into  a  little  heap,  a  very  little  heap  indeed  compared 
with  the  bulk  of  that  they  came  from.  The  boys  gloried 
in  getting  as  much  walnut  stain  on  their  hands  as  they 
could,  for  it  would  not  wash  off,  and  it  showed  for  days 
f  that  they  had  been  walnutting ;  sometimes  they  got  to 
staining  one  another's  faces  with  the  juice,  and  pretend- 
ing they  were  Indians. 

The  sun  rose  higher  and  higher,  and  burned  the  frost 
from  the  grass,  and  while  the  boys  worked  and  yelled 
and  chattered  they  got  hotter  and  hotter,  and  began 
to  take  off  their  shoes  and  stockings,  till  every  one  of 
them  was  barefoot.  Then,  about  three  or  four  o'clock, 
they  would  start  homewrard,  with  half  a  bushel  of  wal- 
nuts in  their  wagon,  and  their  shoes  and  stockings  piled 
in  on  top  of  them.  That  is,  if  they  had  good  luck.  In 
a  story,  they  would  always  have  had  good  luck,  and  al- 
ways gone  home  with  half  a  bushel  of  walnuts ;  but 


FORAGING. 


FOKAGING.  169 

this  is  a  history,  and  so  I  have  to  own  that  they  usually 
went  home  with  about  two  quarts  of  walnuts  rattling 
round  under  their  shoes  and  stockings  in  the  bottom 
of  the  wagon.  They  usually  had  no  such  easy  time 
getting  them  as  they  always  would  in  a  story  ;  they  did 
not  find  them  under  the  trees,  or  ready  to  drop  off,  but 
they  had  to  knock  them  off  with  about  six  or  seven 
clubs  or  rocks  to  every  walnut,  and  they  had  to  pound 
the  hulls  so  hard  to  get  the  nuts  out  that  sometimes 
they  cracked  the  nuts.  That  was  because  they  usually 
went  walnutting  before  the  walnuts  were  ripe.  But 
they  made  just  as  much  preparation  for  drying  the  nuts 
on  the  wood-shed  roof  whether  they  got  half  a  gallon 
or  half  a  bushel ;  for  they  did  not  intend  to  stop  gather- 
ing them  till  they  had  two  or  three  barrels.  They  nailed 
a  cleat  across  the  roof  to  keep  them  from  rolling  off, 
and  they  spread  them  out  thin,  so  that  they  could  look 
more  than  they  were,  and  dry  better.  They  said  they 
were  going  to  keep  them  for  Christmas,  but  they  had 
to  try  pretty  nearly  every  hour  or  so  whether  they  were 
getting  dry,  and  in  about  three  days  they  were  all  eaten 
up. 

I  dare  say  boys  are  very  different  nowadays,  and  do 
everything  they  say  they  are  going  to  do,  and  carry  out 
all  their  undertakings.  But  in  that  day  they  never  car- 
ried out  any  of  their  undertakings.  Perhaps  they  un- 
dertook too  much ;  but  the  failure  was  a  part  of  the 
pleasure  of  undertaking  a  great  deal,  and  if  they  had 
not  failed  they  would  have  left  nothing  for  the  men  to 
do ;  and  a  more  disgusting  thing  than  a  world  full  of 
idle  men  who  had  done  everything  there  was  to  do 
while  they  were  boys,  I  cannot  imagine.  The  fact  is, 
boys  have  to  leave  a  little  for  men  to  do,  or  else  the 


170  a  boy's  town. 

race  would  go  to  ruin ;  and  this  almost  makes  me  half 
believe  that  perhaps  even  the  boys  of  the  present  time 
may  be  prevented  from  doing  quite  as  much  as  they 
think  they  are  going  to  do,  until  they  grow  up.  Even 
then  they  may  not  want  to  do  it  all,  but  only  a  small 
part  of  it.  I  have  noticed  that  men  do  not  undertake 
half  so  many  things  as  boys  do ;  and  instead  of  want- 
ing to  be  circus-actors  and  Indians,  and  soldiers,  and 
boat-drivers,  and  politicians  and  robbers,  and  to  run  off, 
and  go  in  swimming  all  the  time,  and  out  hunting  and 
walnutting,  they  keep  to  a  very  few  things,  and  are  glad 
then  if  they  can  do  them.  It  is  very  curious,  but  it  is 
true ;  and  I  advise  any  boy  who  doubts  it  to  watch  his 
father  awhile. 


XV. 

MY   BOY. 

Every  boy  is  two  or  three  boys,  or  twenty  or  thirty 
different  kinds  of  boys  in  one ;  he  is  all  the  time  living 
many  lives  and  forming  many  characters ;  but  it  is  a 
good  thing  if  he  can  keep  one  life  and  one  character 
when  he  gets  to  be  a  man.  He  may  turn  out  to  be  like 
an  onion  when  he  is  grown  up,  and  be  nothing  but  hulls, 
that  you  keep  peeling  off,  one  after  another,  till  you 
think  you  have  got  down  to  the  heart,  at  last,  and  then 
you  have  got  down  to  nothing. 

All  the  boys  may  have  been  like  my  boy  in  the  Boy's 
Town,  in  having  each  an  inward  being  that  was  not  the 
least  like  their  outward  being,  but  that  somehow  seemed 
to  be  their  real  self,  whether  it  truly  was  so  or  not. 
But  I  am  certain  that  this  was  the  case  with  him,  and 
that  while  he  was  joyfully  sharing  the  wild  sports  and 
conforming  to  the  savage  usages  of  the  boy's  world 
about  him,  he  was  dwelling  in  a  wholly  different  world 
within  him,  whose  wonders  no  one  else  knew.  I  could 
not  tell  now  these  wonders  any  more  than  he  could 
have  told  them  then ;  but  it  was  a  world  of  dreams,  of 
hopes,  of  purposes,  which  he  would  have  been  more 
ashamed  to  avow  for  himself  than  I  should  be  to  avow 
for  him.  It  was  all  vague  and  vast,  and  it  came  out  of 
the  books  that  he  read,  and  that  filled  his  soul  with 
their  witchery,  and  often  held  him  aloof  with  their 


172  A  boy's  town. 

charm  in  the  midst  of  the  plays  from  which  they  could 
not  lure  him  wholly  away,  or  at  all  away.  He  did  not 
know  how  or  when  their  enchantment  began,  and  he 
could  hardly  recall  the  names  of  some  of  them  after- 
wards. First  of  them  was  Goldsmith's  "  History  of 
Greece,"  which  made  him  an  Athenian  of  Pericles's 
time,  and  Goldsmith's  "  History  of  Rome,"  which  natu- 
ralized him  in  a  Roman  citizenship  chiefly  employed  in 
slaying  tyrants ;  from  the  time  of  Appius  Claudius  down 
to  the  time  of  Domitian,  there  was  hardly  a  tyrant  that 
he  did  not  slay.  After  he  had  read  these  books,  not 
once  or  twice,  but  twenty  times  over,  his  father  thought 
fit  to  put  into  his  hands  "  The  Travels  of  Captain  Ashe 
in  North  America,"  to  encourage,  or  perhaps  to  test, 
his  taste  for  useful  reading ;  but  this  was  a  failure. 
The  captain's  travels  were  printed  with  long  esses,  and 
the  boy  could  make  nothing  of  them,  for  other  reasons. 
The  fancy  nourished  upon 

"  The  glory  that  was  Greece 
And  the  grandeur  that  was  Rome," 

starved  amidst  the  robust  plenty  of  the  Englishman's  criti- 
cisms of  our  early  manners  and  customs.  Neither  could 
money  hire  the  boy  to  read  "  Malte-Brun's  Geography," 
in  three  large  folios,  of  a  thousand  pages  each,  for  which 
there  was  a  standing  offer  of  fifty  cents  from  the  father, 
who  had  never  been  able  to  read  it  himself.  But 
shortly  after  he  failed  so  miserably  with  Captain  Ashe, 
the  boy  came  into  possession  of  a  priceless  treasure. 
It  was  that  little  treatise  on  "  Greek  and  Roman  Mythol- 
ogy "  which  I  have  mentioned,  and  which  he  must  liter- 
ally have  worn  out  with  reading,  since  no  fragment  of 
it  seems  to  have  survived  his  boyhood.     Heaven  knows 


MY   BOY.  173 

who  wrote  it  or  published  it ;  his  father  bought  it  with 
a  number  of  other  books  at  an  auction,  and  the  boy, 
who  had  about  that  time  discovered  the  chapter  on 
prosody  in  the  back  part  of  his  grammar,  made  poems 
from  it  for  years,  and  appeared  in  many  transfigura- 
tions, as  this  and  that  god  and  demigod  and  hero  upon 
imagined  occasions  in  the  Boy's  Town,  to  the  fancied 
admiration  of  all  the  other  fellows.  I  do  not  know  just 
why  he  wished  to  appear  to  his  grandmother  in  a  vision  ; 
now  as  Mercury  with  winged  feet,  now  as  Apollo  with 
his  drawn  bow,  now  as  Hercules  leaning  upon  his  club 
and  resting  from  his  Twelve  Labors.  Perhaps  it  was 
because  he  thought  that  his  grandmother,  who  used  to 
tell  the  children  about  her  life  in  Wales,  and  show  them 
the  picture  of  a  castle  where  she  had  once  slept  when 
she  was  a  girl,  would  appreciate  him  in  these  apotheo- 
ses. If  he  believed  they  would  make  a  vivid  impression 
upon  the  sweet  old  Quaker  lady,  no  doubt  he  was  right. 
There  was  another  book  which  he  read  about  this 
time,  and  that  was  "  The  Greek  Soldier."  It  was  the 
story  of  a  young  Greek,  a  glorious  Athenian,  who  had 
fought  through  the  Greek  war  of  independence  against 
the  Turks,  and  then  come  to  America  and  published 
the  narrative  of  his  adventures.  They  fired  my  boy 
with  a  retrospective  longing  to  have  been  present  at  the 
Battle  of  Navarino,  when  the  allied  ships  of  the  Eng- 
lish, French,  and  Russians  destroyed  the  Turkish  fleet ; 
but  it  seemed  to  him  that  he  could  not  have  borne  to 
have  the  allies  impose  a  king  upon  the  Greeks,  when 
they  really  wanted  a  republic,  and  so  he  was  able  to 
console  himself  for  having  been  absent.  He  did  what 
he  could  in  fighting  the  war  over  again,  and  he  intended 
to  harden  himself  for  the  long  struggle  by  sleeping  on 


174  A  BOY'S  TOWN. 

the  floor,  as  the  Greek  soldier  had  done.  But  the  chil- 
dren often  fell  asleep  on  the  floor  in  the  warmth  of  the 
hearth-fire ;  and  his  preparation  for  the  patriotic  strife 
was  not  distinguishable  in  its  practical  effect  from  a 
reluctance  to  go  to  bed  at  the  right  hour. 

Captain  Riley's  narrative  of  his  shipwreck  on  the 
coast  of  Africa,  and  his  captivity  among  the  Arabs,  was 
a  book  which  my  boy  and  his  brother  prized  with  a 
kind  of  personal  interest,  because  their  father  told  them 
that  he  had  once  seen  a  son  of  Captain  Riley  when  he 
went  to  get  his  appointment  of  collector  at  Columbus, 
and  that  this  son  was  named  William  Willshire  Riley, 
after  the  good  English  merchant,  William  Willshire, 
who  had  ransomed  Captain  Riley.  William  Willshire 
seemed  to  them  almost  the  best  man  who  ever  lived ; 
though  my  boy  had  secretly  a  greater  fondness  for  the 
Arab,  Sidi  Hamet,  who  was  kind  to  Captain  Riley  and 
kept  his  brother  Seid  from  ill-treating  him  whenever 
he  could.  Probably  the  boy  liked  him  better  because 
the  Arab  was  more  picturesque  than  the  Englishman. 
The  whole  narrative  was  very  interesting ;  it  had  a  vein 
of  sincere  and  earnest  piety  in  it  which  was  not  its  least 
charm,  and  it  was  written  in  a  style  of  old-fashioned 
stateliness  which  was  not  without  its  effect  with  the  boys. 

Somehow  they  did  not  think  of  the  Arabs  in  this 
narrative  as  of  the  same  race  and  faith  with  the  Arabs 
of  Bagdad  and  the  other  places  in  the  "  Arabian  Nights." 
They  did  not  think  whether  these  were  Mohammedans 
or  not ;  they  naturalized  them  in  the  fairy  world 
where  all  boys  are  citizens,  and  lived  with  them  there 
upon  the  same  familiar  terms  as  they  lived  with  Robin- 
son Crusoe.  Their  father  once  told  them  that  Robinson 
Crusoe  had  robbed  the  real  narrative  of  Alexander  Sel- 


MY   BOY.  175 

kirk  of  the  place  it  ought  to  have  held  in  the  remem- 
brance of  the  world ;  and  my  boy  had  a  feeling  of  guilt 
in  reading  it,  as  if  he  were  making  himself  the  accomplice 
of  an  impostor.  He  liked  the  "  Arabian  Nights,"  but 
oddly  enough  these  wonderful  tales  made  no  such  impres- 
sion on  his  fancy  as  the  stories  in  a  wretchedly  inferior 
book  made.  He  did  not  know  the  name  of  this  book, 
or  who  wrote  it ;  from  which  I  imagine  that  much  of  his 
reading  was  of  the  purblind  sort  that  ignorant  grown- 
up people  do,  without  any  sort  of  literary  vision.  He 
read  this  book  perpetually,  when  he  was  not  reading 
his  "  Greek  and  Roman  Mythology  ;"  and  then  suddenly, 
one  day,  as  happens  in  childhood  with  so  many  things, 
it  vanished  out  of  his  possession  as  if  by  magic.  Per- 
haps he  lost  it ;  perhaps  he  lent  it ;  at  any  rate  it  was 
gone,  and  he  never  got  it  back,  and  he  never  knew  what 
book  it  was  till  thirty  years  afterwards,  when  he  picked 
up  from  a  friend's  library-table  a  copy  of  "  Gesta  Ro- 
manorum,"  and  recognized  in  this  collection  of  old 
monkish  legends  the  long-missing  treasure  of  his  boy- 
hood. These  stories,  without  beauty  of  invention,  with- 
out art  of  construction  or  character,  without  spirituality 
in  their  crude  materialization,  which  were  read  aloud  in 
the  refectories  of  mediaeval  cloisters  while  the  monks  sat 
at  meat,  laid  a  spell  upon  the  soul  of  the  boy  that  gov- 
erned his  life.  He  conformed  his  conduct  to  the  princi- 
ples and  maxims  which  actuated  the  behavior  of  the  shad- 
owy people  of  these  dry-as-dust  tales ;  he  went  about 
drunk  with  the  fumes  of  fables  about  Roman  emperors 
that  never  were,  in  an  empire  that  never  was ;  and,  though 
they  tormented  him  by  putting  a  mixed  and  impossible 
civilization  in  the  place  of  that  he  knew  from  his  Gold- 
smith, he  was  quite  helpless  to  break  from  their  influence. 


176  A  boy's  town. 

He  was  always  expecting  some  wonderful  thing  to  hap- 
pen to  him  as  things  happened  there  in  fulfilment  of 
some  saying  or  prophecy  ;  and  at  every  trivial  moment 
he  made  sayings  and  prophecies  for  himself,  which  he 
wished  events  to  fulfil.  One  Sunday  when  he  was  walk- 
ing in  an  alley  behind  one  of  the  stores,  he  found  a  fur 
cap  that  had  probably  fallen  out  of  the  store-loft  win- 
dow. He  ran  home  with  it,  and  in  his  simple-hearted 
rapture  he  told  his  mother  that  as  soon  as  he  picked  it 
up  there  came  into  his  mind  the  words,  "  He  who  pick- 
eth  up  this  cap  picketh  up  a  fortune,"  and  he  could 
hardly  wait  for  Monday  to  come  and  let  him  restore 
the  cap  to  its  owner  and  receive  an  enduring  prosperity 
in  reward  of  his  virtue.  Heaven  knows  what  form  he 
expected  this  to  take ;  but  when  he  found  himself  in 
the  store,  he  lost  all  courage ;  his  tongue  clove  to  the 
roof  of  his  mouth,  and  he  could  not  utter  a  syllable  of 
the  fine  phrases  he  had  made  to  himself.  He  laid  the 
cap  on  the  counter  without  a  word ;  the  storekeeper 
came  up  and  took  it  in  his  hand.  "  What's  this  ?"  he 
said.  "  Why,  this  is  ours,"  and  he  tossed  the  cap  into 
a  loose  pile  of  hats  by  the  showcase,  and  the  boy  slunk 
out,  cut  to  the  heart  and  crushed  to  the  dust.  It  was 
such  a  cruel  disappointment  and  mortification  that  it 
was  rather  a  relief  to  have  his  brother  mock  him,  and 
come  up  and  say  from  time  to  time,  "  He  who  picketh 
up  this  cap  picketh  up  a  fortune,"  and  then  split  into 
a  jeering  laugh.  At  least  he  could  fight  his  brother, 
and,  when  he  ran,  could  stone  him ;  and  he  could  throw 
quads  and  quoins,  and  pieces  of  riglet  at  the  jour  print- 
ers when  the  story  spread  to  them,  and  one  of  them  would 
begin,  "  He  who  picketh — " 

He  was  wot  different  from  other  boys  in  his  desire  to 


MY   BOY.  177 

localize,  to  realize,  what  lie  read ;  and  he  was  always 
contriving  in  fancy  scenes  and  encounters  of  the  great- 
est splendor,  in  which  he  bore  a  chief  part.  Inwardly 
he  was  all  thrones,  principalities,  and  powers,  the  foe 
of  tyrants,  the  friend  of  good  emperors,  and  the  inti- 
mate of  magicians,  and  magnificently  apparelled;  out- 
wardly he  was  an  incorrigible  little  sloven,  who  suffered 
in  all  social  exigencies  from  the  direst  bashfulness, 
and  wished  nothing  so  much  as  to  shrink  out  of  the 
sight  of  men  if  they  spoke  to  him.  He  could  not  help 
revealing  sometimes  to  the  kindness  of  his  father  and 
mother  the  world  of  foolish  dreams  one  half  of  him 
lived  in,  while  the  other  half  swam,  and  fished,  and 
hunted,  and  ran  races,  and  played  tops  and  marbles, 
and  squabbled  and  scuffled  in  the  Boy's  Town.  Very 
likely  they  sympathized  with  him  more  than  they  let 
him  know ;  they  encouraged  his  reading,  and  the  father 
directed  his  taste  as  far  as  might  be,  especially  in  po- 
etry. The  boy  liked  to  make  poetry,  but  he  preferred 
to  read  prose,  though  he  listened  to  the  poems  his  father 
read  aloud,  so  as  to  learn  how  they  were  made.  He 
learned  certain  pieces  by  heart,  like  "  The  Turk  lay 
dreaming  of  the  hour,"  and  "  Pity  the  sorrows  of  a 
poor  old  man,"  and  he  was  fond  of  some  passages  that 
his  father  wished  him  to  know  in  Thomson's  "  Sea- 
sons." There  were  some  of  Moore's  songs,  too,  that  he 
was  fond  of,  such  as  "  When  in  death  I  shall  calm 
recline,"  and  "  It  was  noon  and  on  flowers  that  ranged 
all  around."  He  learned  these  by  heart,  to  declaim 
at  school,  where  he  spoke,  "  On  the  banks  of  the 
Danube  fair  Adelaide  hied,"  from  Campbell ;  but  he 
could  hardly  speak  the  "  Soldier's  Dream  "  for  the  lump 
that  came  into  his  throat  at  the  lines, 


1*78  A   BOY'S   TOWN. 

"  My  little  ones  kissed  me  a  thousand  times  o'er, 
And  my  wife  sobbed  aloud  in  her  fulness  of  heart. 

"  '  Stay,  stay  with  us  !     Stay !     Thou  art  weary  and  worn !' 
And  fain  was  their  war-broken  soldier  to  stay; 
But  sorrow  returned  at  the  dawning  of  morn, 
And  the  voice  in  my  dreaming  ear  melted  away  !" 

He  was  himself  both  the  war-broken  soldier  and  the 
little  ones  that  kissed  him,  in  the  rapture  of  this  now 
old-fashioned  music,  and  he  woke  with  pangs  of  heart- 
break in  the  very  person  of  the  dreamer. 

But  he  could  not  make  anything  either  of  Byron  or 
Cowper ;  and  he  did  not  even  try  to  read  the  little  tree- 
calf  volumes  of  Homer  and  Virgil  which  his  father  had 
in  the  versions  of  Pope  and  Dryden ;  the  small  copper- 
plates with  which  they  were  illustrated  conveyed  no 
suggestion  to  him.  Afterwards  he  read  Goldsmith's 
"  Deserted  Village,"  and  he  formed  a  great  passion  for 
Pope's  "  Pastorals,"  which  he  imitated  in  their  easy  he- 
roics ;  but  till  he  came  to  read  Longfellow,  and  Tenny- 
son, and  Heine,  he  never  read  any  long  poem  without 
more  fatigue  than  pleasure.  His  father  used  to  say 
that  the  taste  for  poetry  was  an  acquired  taste,  like 
the  taste  for  tomatoes,  and  that  he  would  come  to 
it  yet ;  but  he  never  came  to  it,  or  so  much  of  it  as 
some  people  seemed  to  do,  and  he  always  had  his  sor- 
rowful misgivings  as  to  whether  they  liked  it  as  much 
as  they  pretended.  I  think,  too,  that  it  should  be  a 
flavor,  a  spice,  a  sweet,  a  delicate  relish  in  the  high 
banquet  of  literature,  and  never  a  chief  dish  ;  and  I 
should  not  know  how  to  defend  my  boy  for  trying  to 
make  long  poems  of  his  own  at  the  very  time  when  he 
found  it  so  hard  to  read  other  people's  long  poems. 

He  had  no  conception  of  authorship  as  a  vocation  in 


MY  BOY.  119 

life,  and  he  did  not  know  why  he  wanted  to  make  po- 
etry. After  first  flaunting  his  skill  in  it  before  the  boys, 
and  getting  one  of  thern  into  trouble  by  writing  a  love- 
letter  for  him  to  a  girl  at  school,  and  making  the  girl 
cry  at  a  thing  so  strange  and  puzzling  as  a  love-letter 
in  rhyme,  he  preferred  to  conceal  his  gift.     It  became 

"  His  shame  in  crowds — his  solitary  pride," 

and  he  learned  to  know  that  it  was  considered  soft  to 
write  poetry,  as  indeed  it  mostly  is.  He  himself  re- 
garded with  contempt  a  young  man  who  had  printed  a 
piece  of  poetry  in  his  father's  newspaper  and  put  his 
own  name  to  it.  He  did  not  know  what  he  would  not 
have  done  sooner  than  print  poetry  and  put  his  name 
to  it;  and  he  was  melted  with  confusion  when  a  girl 
who  was  going  to  have  a  party  came  to  him  at  the 
printing-office  and  asked  him  to  make  her  the  invita- 
tions in  verse.  The  printers  laughed,  and  it  seemed  to 
the  boy  that  he  could  never  get  over  it. 

But  such  disgraces  are  soon  lived  down,  even  at  ten 
years,  and  a  great  new  experience  which  now  came  to 
him  possibly  helped  the  boy  to  forget.  This  was  the 
theatre,  which  he  had  sometimes  heard  his  father  speak 
of.  There  had  once  been  a  theatre  in  the  Boy's  Town, 
when  a  strolling  company  came  up  from  Cincinnati,  and 
opened  for  a  season  in  an  empty  pork-house.  But  that 
was  a  long  time  ago,  and,  though  he  had  written  a  trag- 
edy, all  that  the  boy  knew  of  a  theatre  was  from  a  pict- 
ure in  a  Sunday-school  book  where  a  stage  scene  was 
given  to  show  what  kind  of  desperate  amusements  a 
person  might  come  to  in  middle  life  if  he  began  by 
breaking  the  Sabbath  in  his  youth.  His  brother  had 
once  been  taken  to  a  theatre  in  Pittsburgh  by  one  of 


180  A   BOY'S    TOWN. 

their  river-going  uncles,  and  he  often  told  about  it ;  but 
my  boy  formed  no  conception  of  the  beautiful  reality 
from  his  accounts  of  a  burglar  who  jumped  from  a  roof 
and  was  chased  by  a  watchman  with  a  pistol  up  and 
down  a  street  with  houses  painted  on  a  curtain. 

The  company  which  came  to  the  Boy's  Town  in  his 
time  was  again  from  Cincinnati,  and  it  was  under  the 
management  of  the  father  and  mother  of  two  actresses, 
afterwards  famous,  who  were  then  children,  just  start- 
ing upon  their  career.  These  pretty  little  creatures  took 
the  leading  parts  in  "Bombastes  Furioso,"  the  first  night 
my  boy  ever  saw  a  play,  and  he  instantly  fell  impar- 
tially in  love  with  both  of  them,  and  tacitly  remained 
their  abject  slave  for  a  great  while  after.  When  the 
smaller  of  them  came  out  with  a  large  pair  of  stage 
boots  in  one  hand  and  a  drawn  sword  in  the  other,  and 
said, 

"  Whoever  dares  these  boots  displace 
Shall  meet  Bombastes  face  to  face," 

if  the  boy  had  not  already  been  bereft  of  his  senses  by 
the  melodrama  preceding  the  burlesque,  he  must  have 
been  transported  by  her  beauty,  her  grace,  her  genius. 
He,  indeed,  gave  her  and  her  sister  his  heart,  but  his 
mind  was  already  gone,  rapt  from  him  by  the  adorable 
pirate  who  fought  a  losing  fight  with  broadswords,  two 
up  and  two  down — click-click,  click-click — and  died  all 
over  the  deck  of  the  pirate  ship  in  the  opening  piece. 
This  was  called  the  "  Beacon  of  Death,"  and  the  scene 
represented  the  forecastle  of  the  pirate  ship  with  a  lan- 
tern dangling  from  the  rigging,  to  lure  unsuspecting 
merchantmen  to  their  doom.  Afterwards,  the  boy  re- 
membered nothing  of  the  story,  but  a  scrap  of  the  dia- 
logue meaninglessly  remained  with  him ;  and  when  the 


"the  beacon  of  death. 


MY   BOY.  181 

pirate  captain  appeared  with  his  bloody  crew  and  said, 
hoarsely,  "  Let  us  go  below  and  get  some  brandy  !"  the 
boy  would  have  bartered  all  his  hopes  of  bliss  to  have 
been  that  abandoned  ruffian.  In  fact,  he  always  liked, 
and  longed  to  be,  the  villain,  rather  than  any  other  per- 
son in  the  play,  and  he  so  glutted  himself  with  crime 
of  every  sort  in  his  tender  years  at  the  theatre  that  he 
afterwards  came  to  be  very  tired  of  it,  and  avoided  the 
plays  and  novels  that  had  very  marked  villains  in  them. 

He  was  iu  an  ecstasy  as  soon  as  the  curtain  rose  that 
night,  and  he  lived  somewhere  out  of  his  body  as  long 
as  the  playing  lasted,  which  was  well  on  to  midnight ; 
for  in  those  days  the  theatre  did  not  meanly  put  the 
public  off  with  one  play,  but  gave  it  a  heartful  and  its 
money's  worth  with  three.  On  his  first  night  my  boy 
saw  "  The  Beacon  of  Death,"  "  Bombastes  Furioso," 
and  "  Black-eyed  Susan,"  and  he  never  afterwards  saw 
less  than  three  plays  each  night,  and  he  never  missed  a 
night,  as  long  as  the  theatre  languished  in  the  unfriendly 
air  of  that  mainly  Calvinistic  community,  where  the  the- 
atre was  regarded  by  most  good  people  as  the  eighth 
of  the  seven  deadly  sins.  The  whole  day  long  he  dwelt 
in  a  dream  of  it  that  blotted  out,  or  rather  consumed 
with  more  effulgent  brightness,  all  the  other  day-dreams 
he  had  dreamed  before,  and  his  heart  almost  burst  with 
longing  to  be  a  villain  like  those  villains  on  the  stage, 
to  have  a  moustache — a  black  moustache — such  as  they 
wore  at  a  time  when  every  one  off  the  stage  was  clean 
shaven,  and  somehow  to  end  bloodily,  murderously,  as 
became  a  villain. 

I  dare  say  this  was  not  quite  a  wholesome  frame  of 
mind  for  a  boy  of  ten  years ;  but  I  do  not  defend  it ; 
I  only  portray  it.     Being-  the  boy  he  was,  he  was  des- 


182  A   BOY'S   TOWN. 

tined  somehow  to  dwell  half  the  time  in  a  world  of 
dreamery ;  and  I  have  tried  to  express  how,  when  he 
had  once  got  enough  of  villainy,  he  reformed  his  ideals 
and  rather  liked  virtue.  At  any  rate,  it  was  a  phase  of 
being  that  could  not  have  been  prevented  without  liter- 
ally destroying  him,  and  I  feel  pretty  sure  that  his 
father  did  well  to  let  him  have  his  fill  of  the  theatre 
at  once.  He  could  not  have  known  of  the  riot  of 
emotions  behind  the  child's  shy  silence,  or  how  contin- 
ually he  was  employed  in  dealing  death  to  all  the  good 
people  in  the  pieces  he  saw  or  imagined.  This  the  boy 
could  no  more  have  suffered  to  appear  than  his  passion 
for  those  lovely  little  girls,  for  whose  sake  he  somehow 
perpetrated  these  wicked  deeds.  The  theatre  bills,  large 
and  small,  were  printed  in  his  father's  office,  and  some- 
times the  amiable  manager  and  his  wife  strolled  in  with 
the  copy.  The  boy  always  wildly  hoped  and  feared 
they  would  bring  the  little  girls  with  them,  but  they 
never  did,  and  he  contented  himself  with  secretly  ador- 
ing the  father  and  mother,  doubly  divine  as  their  parents 
and  as  actors.  They  were  on  easy  terms  with  the  roller- 
boy,  the  wretch  who  shot  turtle-doves  with  no  regard 
for  their  symbolical  character,  and  they  joked  with  him,  in 
a  light  give-and-take  that  smote  my  boy  with  an  anguish 
of  envy.  It  would  have  been  richly  enough  for  him  to 
pass  the  least  word  with  them  ;  a  look,  a  smile  from 
them  would  have  been  bliss  ;  but  he  shrank  out  of  their 
way ;  and  once  when  he  met  them  in  the  street,  and 
they  seemed  to  be  going  to  speak  to  him,  he  ran  so 
that  they  could  not. 


XVI. 

OTHEK   BOYS. 

I  cannot  quite  understand  why  the  theatre,  which 
my  boy  was  so  full  of,  and  so  fond  of,  did  not  inspire 
hirn  to  write  plays,  to  pour  them  out,  tragedy  upon 
tragedy,  till  the  world  was  filled  with  tears  and  blood. 
Perhaps  it  was  because  his  soul  was  so  soaked,  and,  as 
it  were,  water-logged  with  the  drama,  that  it  could  only 
drift  sluggishly  in  that  welter  of  emotions,  and  make 
for  no  point,  no  port,  where  it  could  recover  itself  and 
direct  its  powers  again.  The  historical  romance  which 
he  had  begun  to  write  before  the  impassioned  days  of 
the  theatre  seems  to  have  been  lost  sight  of  at  this 
time,  though  it  was  an  enterprise  that  he  was  so  confi- 
dent of  carrying  forward  that  he  told  all  his  family  and 
friends  about  it,  and  even  put  down  the  opening  pas- 
sages of  it  on  paper  which  he  cut  in  large  quantity,  and 
ruled  himself,  so  as  to  have  it  exactly  suitable.  The 
story,  as  I  have  said,  was  imagined  from  events  in  Irv- 
ing's  history  of  the  "  Conquest  of  Granada,"  a  book 
which  the  boy  loved  hardly  less  than  the  monkish  le- 
gends of  "  Gesta  Romanorum,"  and  it  concerned  the  rival 
fortunes  of  Hamet  el  Zegri  and  Boabdil  el  Chico,  the 
uncle  and  nephew  who  vied  with  each  other  for  the 
crumbling  throne  of  the  Moorish  kingdom ;  but  I  have 
not  the  least  notion  how  it  all  ended.  Perhaps  the  boy 
himself  had  none. 


184  A  boy's  town. 

I  wish  I  could  truly  say  that  he  finished  any  of  his 
literary  undertakings,  but  I  cannot.  They  were  so  many 
that  they  cumbered  the  house,  and  were  trodden  under 
foot ;  and  sometimes  they  brought  him  to  open  shame, 
as  when  his  brother  picked  one  of  them  up,  and  began 
to  read  it  out  loud  with  affected  admiration.  He  was 
apt  to  be  ashamed  of  his  literary  efforts  after  the  first 
moment,  and  he  shuddered  at  his  brother's  burlesque 
of  the  high  romantic  vein  in  which  most  of  his  never- 
ended  beginnings  were  conceived.  One  of  his  river- 
faring  uncles  was  visiting  with  his  family  at  the  boy's 
home  when  he  laid  out  the  scheme  of  his  great  fiction 
of  "  Hamet  el  Zegri,"  and  the  kindly  young  aunt  took 
an  interest  in  it  which  he  poorly  rewarded  a  few  months 
later,  when  she  asked  how  the  story  was  getting  on,  and 
he  tried  to  ignore  the  whole  matter,  and  showed  such 
mortification  at  the  mention  of  it  that  the  poor  lady 
was  quite  bewildered. 

The  trouble  with  him  was,  that  he  had  to  live  that 
kind  of  double  life  I  have  spoken  of — the  Boy's  Town 
life  and  the  Cloud  Dweller's  life — and  that  the  last, 
which  he  was  secretly  proud  of,  abashed  him  before  the 
first.  This  is  always  the  way  with  double-lived  people, 
but  he  did  not  know  it,  and  he  stumbled  along  through 
the  glory  and  the  ignominy  as  best  he  could,  and,  as  he 
thought,  alone. 

He  was  often  kept  from  being  a  fool,  and  worse,  by 
that  elder  brother  of  his ;  and  I  advise  every  boy  to 
have  an  elder  brother.  Have  a  brother  about  four  years 
older  than  yourself,  I  should  say  ;  and  if  your  temper 
is  hot,  and  your  disposition  revengeful,  and  you  are  a 
vain  and  ridiculous  dreamer  at  the  same  time  that  you 
are  eager  to  excel  in  feats  of  strength  and  games  of 


OTHER   BOYS.  185 

skill,  and  to  do  everything  that  the  other  fellows  do, 
and  are  ashamed  to  be  better  than  the  worst  boy  in  the 
crowd,  your  brother  can  be  of  the  greatest  use  to  you, 
with  his  larger  experience  and  wisdom.  My  boy's 
brother  seemed  to  have  an  ideal  of  usefulness,  while  my 
boy  only  had  an  ideal  of  glory,  to  wish  to  help  others, 
while  my  boy  only  wished  to  help  himself.  My  boy 
would  as  soon  have  thought  of  his  father's  doing  a 
wrong  thing  as  of  his  brother's  doing  it ;  and  his 
brother  was  a  calm  light  of  common-sense,  of  justice, 
of  truth,  while  he  was  a  fantastic  flicker  of  gaudy  pur- 
poses which  he  wished  to  make  shine  before  men  in 
their  fulfilment.  His  brother  was  always  doing  for  him 
and  for  the  younger  children ;  while  my  boy  only  did 
for  himself ;  he  had  a  very  gray  moustache  before  he 
began  to  have  any  conception  of  the  fact  that  he  was 
sent  into  the  world  to  serve  and  to  suffer,  as  well  as  to 
rule  and  enjoy.  But  his  brother  seemed  to  know  this 
instinctively ;  he  bore  the  yoke  in  his  youth,  patiently 
if  not  willingly ;  he  shared  the  anxieties  as  he  parted 
the  cares  of  his  father  and  mother.  Yet  he  was  a  boy 
among  boys,  too ;  he  loved  to  swim,  to  skate,  to  fish, 
to  forage,  and  passionately,  above  all,  he  loved  to  hunt ; 
but  in  everything  he  held  himself  in  check,  that  he 
might  hold  the  younger  boys  in  check ;  and  my  boy 
often  repaid  his  conscientious  vigilance  with  hard  words 
and  hard  names,  such  as  embitter  even  the  most  self- 
forgiving  memories.  He  kept  mechanically  within  cer- 
tain laws,  and  though  in  his  rage  he  hurled  every  other 
name  at  his  brother,  he  would  not  call  him  a  fool,  be- 
cause then  he  would  be  in  danger  of  hell-fire.  If  he 
had  known  just  what  Raca  meant,  he  might  have  called 

him  Raca,  for  he  was  not  so  much  afraid  of  the  coun- 
13 


186  A   BOY  8   TOWN. 

cil ;  but,  as  it  was,  his  brother  escaped  that  insult,  and 
held  through  all  a  rein  upon  him,  and  governed  him 
through  his  scruples  as  well  as  his  fears. 

His  brother  was  full  of  inventions  and  enterprises 
beyond  most  other  boys,  and  his  undertakings  came  to 
the  same  end  of  nothingness  that  awaits  all  boyish  en- 
deavor. He  intended  to  make  fireworks  and  sell  them  ; 
he  meant  to  raise  silk-worms ;  he  prepared  to  take  the 
contract  of  clearing  the  new  cemetery  grounds  of  stumps 
by  blasting  them  out  with  gunpowder.  Besides  this, 
he  had  a  plan  with  another  big  boy  for  making  money, 
by  getting  slabs  from  the  saw-mill,  and  sawing  them 
up  into  stove-wood,  and  selling  them  to  the  cooks  of 
canal-boats.  The  only  trouble  was  that  the  cooks  would 
not  buy  the  fuel,  even  when  the  boys  had  a  half-cord 
of  it  all  nicely  piled  up  on  the  canal-bank ;  they  would 
rather  come  ashore  after  dark  and  take  it  for  nothing. 
He  had  a  good  many  other  schemes  for  getting  rich, 
that  failed ;  and  he  wanted  to  go  to  California  and  dig 
gold ;  only  his  mother  would  not  consent.  He  really 
did  save  the  Canal-Basin  once,  when  the  banks  began 
to  give  way  after  a  long  rain.  He  saw  the  break  be- 
ginning, and  ran  to  tell  his  father,  who  had  the  fire-bells 
rung.  The  fire  companies  came  rushing  to  the  rescue, 
but  as  they  could  not  put  the  Basin  out  with  their  en- 
gines, they  all  got  shovels  and  kept  it  in.  They  did 
not  do  this  before  it  had  overflowed  the  street,  and  run 
into  the  cellars  of  the  nearest  houses.  The  water  stood 
two  feet  deep  in  the  kitchen  of  my  boy's  house,  and 
the  yard  was  flooded  so  that  the  boys  made  rafts  and 
navigated  it  for  a  whole  day.  My  boy's  brother  got 
drenched  to  the  skin  in  the  rain,  and  lots  of  fellows 
fell  off  the  rafts. 


OTHEK   BOYS.  187 

He  belonged  to  a  military  company  of  big  boys  that 
had  real  wooden  guns,  such  as  the  little  boys  never 
could  get,  and  silk  oil-cloth  caps,  and  nankeen  rounda- 
bouts, and  white  pantaloons  with  black  stripes  down 
the  legs ;  and  once  they  marched  out  to  a  boy's  that 
had  a  father  that  had  a  farm,  and  he  gave  them  all  a 
free  dinner  in  an  arbor  before  the  house ;  bread  and 
butter,  and  apple-butter,  and  molasses  and  pound  cake, 
and  peaches  and  apples ;  it  was  splendid.  When  the 
excitement  about  the  Mexican  War  was  the  highest, 
the  company  wanted  a  fort ;  and  they  got  a  farmer  to 
come  and  scale  off  the  sod  with  his  plough,  in  a  grassy 
place  there  was  near  a  piece  of  woods,  where  a  good 
many  cows  were  pastured.  They  took  the  pieces  of 
sod,  and  built  them  up  into  the  walls  of  a  fort  about 
fifteen  feet  square ;  they  intended  to  build  them  higher 
than  their  heads,  but  they  got  so  eager  to  have  the 
works  stormed  that  they  could  not  wait,  and  they  com- 
menced having  the  battle  when  they  had  the  walls  only 
breast  high.  There  were  going  to  be  two  parties :  one 
to  attack  the  fort,  and  the  other  to  defend  it,  and  they 
were  just  going  to  throw  sods ;  but  one  boy  had  a  real 
shot-gun,  that  he  was  to  load  up  with  powder  and  fire 
off  when  the  battle  got  to  the  worst,  so  as  to  have  it 
more  like  a  battle.  He  thought  it  would  be  more  like 
yet  if  he  put  in  a  few  shot,  and  he  did  it  on  his  own 
hook.  It  was  a  splendid  gun,  but  it  would  not  stand 
cocked  long,  and  he  was  resting  it  on  the  wall  of  the 
fort,  ready  to  fire  when  the  storming-party  came  on, 
throwing  sods  and  yelling  and  holloing ;  and  all  at 
once  his  gun  went  off,  and  a  cow  that  was  grazing  broad- 
side to  the  fort  gave  a  frightened  bellow,  and  put  up 
her  tail,  and  started  for  home.     When  they  found  out 


188  A    BOY'S    TOWN. 

that  the  gun,  if  not  the  boy,  had  shot  a  cow,  the  Mexi- 
cans and  Americans  both  took  to  their  heels  ;  and  it 
was  a  good  thing  they  did  so,  for  as  soon  as  that  cow 
got  home,  and  the  owner  found  out  by  the  blood  on 
her  that  she  had  been  shot,  though  it  was  only  a  very 
slight  wound,  he  was  so  mad  that  he  did  not  know  what 
to  do,  and  very  likely  he  would  have  half  killed  those 
boys  if  he  had  caught  them.  He  got  a  plough,  and  he 
went  out  to  their  fort,  and  he  ploughed  it  all  down 
flat,  so  that  not  one  sod  remained  upon  another. 

My  boy's  brother  had  a  good  many  friends  who  were 
too  old  for  my  boy  to  play  with.  One  of  them  had  a 
father  that  had  a  flour-mill  out  at  the  First  Lock,  and 
for  a  while  my  boy's  brother  intended  to  be  a  miller. 
I  do  not  know  why  he  gave  up  being  one ;  he  did  stay 
up  all  night  with  his  friend  in  the  mill  once,  and  he 
found  out  that  the  water  has  more  power  by  night  than 
by  day,  or  at  least  he  came  to  believe  so.  He  knew 
another  boy  who  had  a  father  who  had  a  stone-quarry 
and  a  canal-boat  to  bring  the  stone  to  town.  It  was  a 
scow,  and  it  was  drawn  by  one  horse  ;  sometimes  he 
got  to  drive  the  horse,  and  once  he  was  allowed  to  steer 
the  boat.  This  was  a  great  thing,  and  it  would  have 
been  hard  to  believe  of  anybody  else.  The  name  of 
the  boy  that  had  the  father  that  owned  this  boat  was 
Piccolo ;  or,  rather,  that  was  his  nickname,  given  him 
because  he  could  whistle  like  a  piccolo-flute.  Once  the 
fellows  were  disputing  whether  you  could  jump  half- 
way across  a  narrow  stream,  and  then  jump  back,  with^ 
out  touching  your  feet  to  the  other  shore.  Piccolo  tried 
it,  and  sat  down  in  the  middle  of  the  stream. 

My  boy's  brother  had  a  scheme  for  preserving  ripe 
fruit,  by  sealing  it  up  in  a  stone  jug  and  burying  the 


OTHER   BOYS.  189 

jug  in  the  ground,  and  not  digging  it  up  till  Christmas. 
He  tried  it  with  a  jug  of  cherries,  which  he  dug  up  in 
about  a  week ;  but  the  cherries  could  not  have  smelt 
worse  if  they  had  been  kept  till  Christmas.  He  knew 
a  boy  that  had  a  father  that  had  a  bakery,  and  that 
used  to  let  him  come  and  watch  them  making  bread. 
There  was  a  fat  boy  learning  the  trade  there,  and  they 
called  him  the  dough-baby,  because  he  looked  so  white 
and  soft ;  and  the  boy  whose  father  had  a  mill  said 
that  down  at  the  German  brewery  they  had  a  Dutch 
boy  that  they  were  teaching  to  drink  beer,  so  they  could 
tell  how  much  beer  a  person  could  drink  if  he  was  taken 
early  ;  but  perhaps  this  was  not  true. 

My  boy's  brother  went  to  all  sorts  of  places  that  my 
boy  was  too  shy  to  go  to  ;  and  he  associated  with  much 
older  boys,  but  there  was  one  boy  who,  as  I  have  said, 
was  the  dear  friend  of  both  of  them,  and  that  was  the 
boy  who  came  to  learn  the  trade  in  their  father's  print- 
ing-office, and  who  began  an  historical  romance  at  the 
time  my  boy  began  his  great  Moorish  novel.  The  first 
day  he  came  he  was  put  to  roll,  or  ink  the  types,  while 
my  boy's  brother  worked  the  press,  and  all  day  long 
my  boy,  from  where  he  was  setting  type,  could  hear 
him  telling  the  story  of  a  book  he  had  read.  It  was 
about  a  person  named  Monte  Cristo,  who  was  a  count, 
and  who  could  do  anything.  My  boy  listened  with  a 
gnawing  literary  jealousy  of  a  boy  who  had  read  a  book 
that  he  had  never  heard  of.  He  tried  to  think  whether 
it  sounded  as  if  it  were  as  great  a  book  as  the  "  Con- 
quest of  Granada,"  or  "  Gesta  Eomanorum ;"  and  for  a 
time  he  kept  aloof  from  this  boy  because  of  his  envy. 
Afterwards  they  came  together  on  "  Don  Quixote,"  but 
though  my  boy  came  to  have  quite  a  passionate  fond- 


190  A  BOY'S  TOWN. 

ness  for  him,  he  was  long  in  getting  rid  of  his  grudge 
against  him  for  his  knowledge  of  "  Monte  Cristo."  He 
was  as  great  a  laugher  as  my  boy  and  his  brother,  and 
he  liked  the  same  sports,  so  that  two  by  two,  or  all 
three  together,  they  had  no  end  of  jokes  and  fun.  He 
became  the  editor  of  a  country  newspaper,  with  vary- 
ing fortunes  but  steadfast  principles,  and  when  the  war 
broke  out  he  went  as  a  private  soldier.  He  soon  rose 
to  be  an  officer,  and  fought  bravely  in  many  battles. 
Then  he  came  back  to  a  country-newspaper  office  where, 
ever  after,  he  continued  to  fight  the  battles  of  right 
against  wrong,  till  he  died  not  long  ago  at  his  post  of 
duty — a  true,  generous,  and  lofty  soul.  He  was  one  of 
those  boys  who  grow  into  the  men  who  seem  commoner 
in  America  than  elsewhere,  and  who  succeed  far  beyond 
our  millionaires  and  statesmen  in  realizing  the  ideal  of 
America  in  their  nobly  simple  lives.  If  his  story  could 
be  faithfully  written  out,  word  for  word,  deed  for  deed, 
it  would  be  far  more  thrilling  than  that  of  Monte  Cristo, 
or  any  hero  of  romance ;  and  so  would  the  common 
story  of  any  common  life  ;  but  we  cannot  tell  these 
stories,  somehow. 

My  boy  knew  nearly  a  hundred  boys,  more  or  less ; 
but  it  is  no  use  trying  to  tell  about  them,  for  all  boys 
are  a  good  deal  alike,  and  most  of  these  did  not  differ 
much  from  the  rest.  They  were  pretty  good  fellows ; 
that  is  to  say,  they  never  did  half  the  mischief  they 
intended  to  do,  and  they  had  moments  of  intending  to 
do  right,  or  at  least  they  thought  they  did,  and  when 
they  did  wrong  they  said  they  did  not  intend  to.  But 
my  boy  never  had  any  particular  friend  among  his 
schoolmates,  though  he  played  and  fought  with  them 
on  intimate  terms,  and  was  a  good  comrade  with  any 


OTHER    BOYS.  191 

boy  that  wanted  to  go  in  swimming  or  out  hunting. 
His  closest  friend  was  a  boy  who  was  probably  never 
willingly  at  school  in  his  life,  and  who  had  no  more 
relish  of  literature  or  learning  in  him  than  the  open 
fields,  or  the  warm  air  of  an  early  spring  day.  I  dare 
say  it  was  a  sense  of  his  kinship  with  nature  that  took 
my  boy  with  him,  and  rested  his  soul  from  all  its  wild 
dreams  and  vain  imaginings.  He  was  like  a  piece 
of  the  genial  earth,  with  no  more  hint  of  toiling  or 
spinning  in  him ;  willing  for  anything,  but  passive, 
and  without  force  or  aim.  He  lived  in  a  belated  log- 
cabin  that  stood  in  the  edge  of  a  corn-field  on  the  river- 
bank,  and  he  seemed,  one  day  when  my  boy  went  to 
find  him  there,  to  have  a  mother,  who  smoked  a  cob- 
pipe,  and  two  or  three  large  sisters  who  hulked  about 
in  the  one  dim,  low  room.  But  the  boys  had  very  lit- 
tle to  do  with  each  other's  houses,  or,  for  that  matter, 
with  each  other's  yards.  His  friend  seldom  entered  my 
boy's  gate,  and  never  his  door ;  for  with  all  the  tolera- 
tion his  father  felt  for  every  manner  of  human  creature, 
he  could  not  see  what  good  the  boy  was  to  get  from 
this  queer  companion.  It  is  certain  that  he  got  no 
harm ;  for  his  companion  was  too  vague  and  void  even 
to  think  evil.  Socially,  he  was  as  low  as  the  ground 
under  foot,  but  morally  he  was  as  good  as  any  boy  in 
the  Boy's  Town,  and  he  had  no  bad  impulses.  He  had 
no  impulses  at  all,  in  fact,  and  of  his  own  motion  he 
never  did  anything,  or  seemed  to  think  anything.  When 
he  wished  to  get  at  my  boy,  he  simply  appeared  in  the 
neighborhood,  and  hung  about  the  outside  of  the  fence 
till  he  came  out.  He  did  not  whistle,  or  call  "  E-oo-we  !" 
as  the  other  fellows  did,  but  waited  patiently  to  be  dis- 
covered, and  to  be  gone  off  with  wherever  my  boy  listed. 


192  A  boy's  town. 

He  never  had  any  plans  himself,  and  never  any  will  but 
to  go  in  swimming ;  he  neither  hunted  nor  foraged ;  he 
did  not  even  fish  ;  and  I  suppose  that  money  could  not 
have  hired  him  to  run  races.  He  played  marbles,  but 
not  very  well,  and  he  did  not  care  much  for  the  game. 
The  two  boys  soaked  themselves  in  the  river  together, 
and  then  they  lay  on  the  sandy  shore,  or  under  some 
tree,  and  talked ;  but  my  boy  could  not  have  talked  to 
him  about  any  of  the  things  that  were  in  his  books,  or 
the  fume  of  dreams  they  sent  up  in  his  mind.  He  must 
rather  have  soothed  against  his  soft,  caressing  igno- 
rance the  ache  of  his  fantastic  spirit,  and  reposed  his 
intensity  of  purpose  in  that  lax  and  easy  aimlessness. 
Their  friendship  was  not  only  more  innocent  than  any 
other  friendship  my  boy  had,  but  it  was  wholly  inno- 
cent ;  they  loved  each  other,  and  that  was  all ;  and  why 
people  love  one  another  there  is  never  any  satisfactory  tell- 
ing. But  this  friend  of  his  must  have  had  great  natural 
good  in  him ;  and  if  I  could  find  a  man  of  the  make  of 
that  boy  I  am  sure  I  should  love  him. 

My  boy's  other  friends  wondered  at  his  fondness  for 
him,  and  it  was  often  made  a  question  with  him  at 
home,  if  not  a  reproach  to  him  ;  so  that  in  the  course  of 
time  it  ceased  to  be  that  comfort  it  had  been  to  him. 
He  could  not  give  him  up,  but  he  could  not  help  seeing 
that  he  was  ignorant  and  idle,  and  in  a  fatal  hour  he 
resolved  to  reform  him.  I  am  not  able  now  to  say  just 
how  he  worked  his  friend  up  to  the  point  of  coming  to 
school,  and  of  washing  his  hands  and  feet  and  face, 
and  putting  on  a  new  check  shirt  to  come  in.  But  one 
day  he  came,  and  my  boy,  as  he  had  planned,  took  him 
into  his  seat,  and  owned  his  friendship  with  him  before 
the  whole  school.     This  was  not  easy,  for  though  every- 


OTHEK   BOYS.  193 

body  knew  how  much  the  two  were  together,  it  was  a 
different  thing  to  sit  with  him  as  if  he  thought  him  just 
as  good  as  any  boy,  and  to  help  him  get  his  lessons,  and 
stay  him  mentally  as  well  as  socially.  He  struggled 
through  one  day,  and  maybe  another ;  but  it  was  a 
failure  from  the  first  moment,  and  my  boy  breathed 
freer  when  his  friend  came  one  half-day,  and  then  never 
came  again.  The  attempted  reform  had  spoiled  their 
simple  and  harmless  intimacy.  They  never  met  again 
upon  the  old  ground  of  perfect  trust  and  affection.  Per- 
haps the  kindly  earth-spirit  had  instinctively  felt  a 
wound  from  the  shame  my  boy  had  tried  to  brave  out, 
and  shrank  from  their  former  friendship  without  quite 
knowing  why.  Perhaps  it  was  my  boy  who  learned  to 
realize  that  there  could  be  little  in  common  but  their  com- 
mon humanity  between  them,  and  could  not  go  back  to 
that.  At  any  rate,  their  friendship  declined  from  this 
point ;  and  it  seems  to  me,  somehow,  a  pity. 

Among  the  boys  who  were  between  my  boy  and  his 
brother  in  age  was  one  whom  all  the  boys  liked,  because 
he  was  clever  with  everybody,  with  little  boys  as  well 
as  big  boys.  He  was  a  laughing,  pleasant  fellow,  al- 
ways ready  for  fun,  but  he  never  did  mean  things, 
and  he  had  an  open  face  that  made  a  friend  of  every 
one  who  saw  him.  He  had  a  father  that  had  a  house 
with  a  lightning-rod,  so  that  if  you  were  in  it  when 
there  was  a  thunder-storm  you  could  not  get  struck  by 
lightning,  as  my  boy  once  proved  by  being  in  it  when 
there  was  a  thunder-storm  and  not  getting  struck.  This 
in  itself  was  a  great  merit,  and  there  were  grape-arbors 
and  peach-trees  in  his  yard  which  added  to  his  popular- 
ity, with  cling-stone  peaches  almost  as  big  as  oranges  on 
them.     He  was  a  fellow  who  could  take  you  home  to 


194  A  BOY'S  TOWN. 

meals  whenever  lie  wanted  to,  and  he  liked  to  have  boys 
stay  all  night  with  him  ;  his  mother  was  as  clever  as  he 
was,  and  even  the  sight  of  his  father  did  not  make  the 
fellows  want  to  go  and  hide.  His  father  was  so  clever 
that  he  went  home  with  my  boy  one  night  about  mid- 
night when  the  boy  had  come  to  pass  the  night  with  his 
boys,  and  the  youngest  of  them  had  said  he  always  had 
the  nightmare  and  walked  in  his  sleep,  and  as  likely  as 
not  he  might  kill  you  before  he  knew  it.  My  boy  tried 
to  sleep,  but  the  more  he  reflected  upon  his  chances  of 
getting  through  the  night  alive  the  smaller  they  seemed  ; 
and  so  he  woke  up  his  potential  murderer  from  the 
sweetest  and  soundest  slumber,  and  said  he  was  going 
home,  but  he  was  afraid  ;  and  the  boy  had  to  go  and 
wake  his  father.  Very  few  fathers  would  have  dressed 
up  and  gone  home  with  a  boy  at  midnight,  and  perhaps 
this  one  did  so  only  because  the  mother  made  him  ;  but 
it  shows  how  clever   the  whole  family  was. 

It  was  their  oldest  boy  whom  my  boy  and  his  broth- 
er chiefly  went  with  before  that  boy  who  knew  about 
"  Monte  Cristo  "  came  to  learn  the  trade  in  their  father's 
office.  One  Saturday  in  July  they  three  spent  the  whole 
day  together.  It  was  just  the  time  when  the  apples 
are  as  big  as  walnuts  on  the  trees,  and  a  boy  wants  to 
try  whether  any  of  them  are  going  to  be  sweet  or  not. 
The  boys  tried  a  great  many  of  them,  in  an  old  orchard 
thrown  open  for  building-lots  behind  my  boy's  yard ; 
but  they  could  not  find  any  that  were  not  sour  ;  or  that 
they  could  eat  till  they  thought  of  putting  salt  on  them ; 
if  you  put  salt  on  it,  you  could  eat  any  kind  of  green 
apple,  whether  it  was  going  to  be  a  sweet  kind  or  not. 
They  went  up  to  the  Basin  bank  and  got  lots  of  salt 
out  of  the  holes  in  the  barrels  lying  there,  and  then  they 


OTHER   BOYS.  195 

ate  all  the  apples  they  could  hold,  and  after  that  they  cut 
limber  sticks  off  the  trees,  and  sharpened  the  points,  and 
stuck  apples  on  them  and  threw  them.  You  could  send  an 
apple  almost  out  of  sight  that  way,  and  you  could  scare 
a  dog  almost  as  far  as  you  could  see  him. 

On  Monday  my  boy  and  his  brother  went  to  school, 
but  the  other  boy  was  not  there,  and  in  the  afternoon 
they  heard  he  was  sick.  Then,  towards  the  end  of  the 
week  they  heard  that  he  had  the  flux ;  and  on  Friday, 
just  before  school  let  out,  the  teacher — it  was  the  one 
that  whipped  so,  and  that  the  fellows  all  liked — rapped 
on  his  desk,  and  began  to  speak  very  solemnly  to  the 
scholars.  He  told  them  that  their  little  mate,  whom 
they  had  played  with  and  studied  with,  was  lying  very 
sick,  so  very  sick  that  it  was  expected  he  would  die  ; 
and  then  he  read  them  a  serious  lesson  about  life  and 
death,  and  tried  to  make  them  feel  how  passing  and  un- 
certain all  things  were,  and  resolve  to  live  so  that  they 
need  never  be  afraid  to  die. 

Some  of  the  fellows  cried,  and  the  next  day  some  of 
them  went  to  see  the  dying  boy,  and  my  boy  went  with 
them.  His  spirit  was  stricken  to  the  earth,  when  he  saw 
his  gay,  kind  playmate  lying  there,  white  as  the  pillow 
under  his  wasted  face,  in  which  his  sunken  blue  eyes 
showed  large  and  strange.  The  sick  boy  did  not  say  any- 
thing that  the  other  boys  could  hear,  but  they  could  see 
the  wan  smile  that  came  to  his  dry  lips,  and  the  light 
come  sadly  into  his  eyes,  when  his  mother  asked  him  if 
he  knew  this  one  or  that ;  and  they  could  not  bear  it,  and 
went  out  of  the  room. 

In  a  few  days  they  heard  that  he  was  dead,  and  one 
afternoon  school  did  not  keep,  so  that  the  boys  might 
go  to  the  funeral.     Most  of  them  walked  in  the  pro- 


196  A  boy's  town. 

cession  ;  but  some  of  them  were  waiting  beside  tbe  open 
grave,  that  was  dug  near  the  grave  of  that  man  who 
believed  there  was  a  hole  through  the  earth  from  pole 
to  pole,  and  had  a  perforated  stone  globe  on  top  of  his 
monument. 


XVII. 

FANTASIES   AND   SUPERSTITIONS. 

My  boy  used  to  be  afraid  of  this  monument,  which 
stood  a  long  time,  or  what  seemed  to  him  a  long  time, 
in  the  yard  of  the  tombstone  cutter  before  it  was  put 
up  at  the  grave  of  the  philosopher  who  imagined  the 
earth  as  hollow  as  much  of  the  life  is  on  it.  He  was  a 
brave  officer  in  the  army  which  held  the  region  against 
the  Indians  in  the  pioneer  times ;  he  passed  the  latter 
part  of  his  life  there,  and  he  died  and  was  buried  in 
the  Boy's  Town.  My  boy  had  to  go  by  the  yard  when 
he  went  to  see  his  grandmother,  and  even  at  high  noon 
the  sight  of  the  officer's  monument,  and  the  other  grave- 
stones standing  and  leaning  about,  made  his  flesh  creep 
and  his  blood  run  cold.  When  there  were  other  boys 
with  him  he  would  stop  at  the  door  of  the  shed,  where 
a  large,  fair  German  was  sawing  slabs  of  marble  with  a 
long  saw  that  had  no  teeth,  and  that  he  eased  every  now 
and  then  with  water  from  a  sponge  he  kept  by  him ; 
but  if  the  boy  was  alone,  and  it  was  getting  at  all  late 
in  the  afternoon,  he  always  ran  by  the  place  as  fast  as 
he  could.  He  could  hardly  have  told  what  he  was 
afraid  of,  but  he  must  have  connected  the  gravestones 
with  ghosts. 

His  superstitions  were  not  all  of  the  ghastly  kind ; 
some  of  them  related  to  conduct  and  character.  It  was 
noted  long  ago  how  boys  throw  stones,  for  instance,  at 


198  A   BOY  8   TOWN. 

a  tree,  and  feign  to  themselves  that  this  thing  or  that, 
of  great  import,  will  happen  or  not  as  they  hit  or  miss 
the  tree.  But  my  boy  had  other  fancies,  which  came 
of  things  he  had  read  and  half  understood.  In  one  of 
his  school-books  was  a  story  that  began,  "  Charles  was 
an  honest  boy,  but  Robert  was  the  name  of  a  thief," 
and  it  went  on  to  show  how  Charles  grew  up  in  the 
respect  and  affection  of  all  who  knew  him  by  forbear- 
ing to  steal  some  oranges  which  their  owner  had  set 
for  safe-keeping  at  the  heels  of  his  horse,  while  Robert 
was  kicked  at  once  (there  was  a  picture  that  showed 
him  holding  his  stomach  with  both  hands),  and  after- 
wards came  to  a  bad  end,  through  attempting  to  take 
one.  My  boy  conceived  from  the  tale  that  the  name 
of  Robert  was  necessarily  associated  with  crime ;  it 
was  long  before  he  outgrew  the  prejudice ;  and  this 
tale  and  others  of  a  like  vindictive  virtuousness  imbued 
him  with  such  a  desire  to  lead  an  upright  life  that  he 
was  rather  a  bother  to  his  friends  with  his  scruples. 
A  girl  at  school  mislaid  a  pencil  which  she  thought  she 
had  lent  him,  and  he  began  to  have  a  morbid  belief 
that  he  must  have  stolen  it ;  he  became  frantic  with 
the  mere  dread  of  guilt;  he  could  not  eat  or  sleep, 
and  it  was  not  till  he  went  to  make  good  the  loss  with 
a  pencil  which  his  grandfather  gave  him  that  the  girl 
said  she  had  found  her  pencil  in  her  desk,  and  saved 
him  from  the  despair  of  a  self-convicted  criminal.  After 
that  his  father  tried  to  teach  him  the  need  of  using  his 
reason  as  well  as  his  conscience  concerning  himself,  and 
not  to  be  a  little  simpleton.  But  he  was  always  in  an 
anguish  to  restore  things  to  their  owners,  like  the  good 
boys  in  the  story-books,  and  he  suffered  pangs  of  the 
keenest  remorse  for  the  part  he  once  took  in  the  dis- 


"he  always  ran  by  the  place  as  past  as  he  could." 


FANTASIES   AND   SUPERSTITIONS.  199 

position  of  a  piece  of  treasure-trove.  This  was  a  brown- 
paper  parcel  which  he  found  behind  a  leaning  grave- 
stone in  the  stone-cutter's  yard,  and  which  he  could  not 
help  peeping  into.  It  was  full  of  raisins,  and  in  the 
amaze  of  such  a  discovery  he  could  not  help  telling 
the  other  boys,,  They  flocked  round  and  swooped 
down  upon  the  parcel  like  birds  of  prey,  and  left  not 
a  raisin  behind.  In  vain  he  implored  them  not  to  stain 
their  souls  with  this  misdeed ;  neither  the  law  nor  the 
prophets  availed  ;  neither  the  awful  shadow  of  the  prison 
which  he  cast  upon  them,  nor  the  fear  of  the  last  judg- 
ment which  he  invoked.  They  said  that  the  raisins 
did  not  belong  to  anybody ;  that  the  owner  had  for- 
gotten all  about  them ;  that  they  had  just  been  put 
there  by  some  one  who  never  intended  to  come  back 
for  them.  He  went  away  sorrowing,  without  touching 
a  raisin  (he  felt  that  the  touch  must  have  stricken  him 
with  death),  and  far  heavier  in  soul  than  the  hardened 
accomplices  of  his  sin,  of  whom  he  believed  himself 
the  worst  in  having  betrayed  the  presence  of  the  raisins 
to  them. 

He  used  to  talk  to  himself  when  he  was  little,  but 
one  day  his  mother  said  to  him  jokingly,  "  Don't  you 
know  that  he  who  talks  to  himself  has  the  devil  for  a 
listener  ?"  and  after  that  he  never  dared  whisper  above 
his  breath  when  he  was  alone,  though  his  father  and 
mother  had  both  taught  him  that  there  was  no  devil 
but  his  own  evil  will.  He  shuddered  when  he  heard 
a  dog  howling  in  the  night,  for  that  was  a  sign  that 
somebody  was  going  to  die.  If  he  heard  a  hen  crow, 
as  a  hen  sometimes  unnaturally  would,  he  stoned  her, 
because  it  was  a  sign  of  the  worst  kind  of  luck.  He 
believed  that  warts  came  from  playing  with  toads,  but 


200  A   BOY  S   TOWN. 

you  could  send  them  away  by  saying  certain  words  over 
them  ;  and  he  was  sorry  that  he  never  had  any  warts, 
so  that  he  could  send  them  away,  and  see  them  go ; 
but  he  never  could  bear  to  touch  a  toad,  and  so  of  course 
he  could  not  have  warts.  Other  boys  played  with  toads 
just  to  show  that  they  were  not  afraid  of  having  warts ; 
but  every  one  knew  that  if  you  killed  a  toad,  your  cow 
would  give  bloody  milk.  I  dare  say  the  far  forefathers 
of  the  race  knew  this  too,  when  they  first  began  to  herd 
their  kine  in  the  birthplace  of  the  Aryan  peoples ;  and 
perhaps  they  learned  then  that  if  you  killed  a  snake 
early  in  the  day  its  tail  would  live  till  sundown.  My 
boy  killed  every  snake  he  could ;  he  thought  it  some- 
how a  duty ;  all  the  boys  thought  so ;  they  dimly  felt 
that  they  were  making  a  just  return  to  the  serpent-tribe 
for  the  bad  behavior  of  their  ancestor  in  the  Garden  of 
Eden.  Once,  in  a  corn-field  near  the  Little  Reservoir, 
the  boys  found  on  a  thawing  day  of  early  spring  knots 
and  bundles  of  snakes  writhen  and  twisted  together, 
in  the  torpor  of  their  long  winter  sleep.  It  was  a 
horrible  sight,  that  afterwards  haunted  my  boy's  dreams. 
He  had  nightmares  which  remained  as  vivid  in  his 
thoughts  as  anything  that  happened  to  him  by  day. 
There  were  no  poisonous  snakes  in  the  region  of  the 
Boy's  Town,  but  there  were  some  large  blacksnakes,  and 
the  boys  said  that  if  a  blacksnake  got  the  chance  he 
would  run  up  your  leg,  and  tie  himself  round  your  body 
so  that  you  could  not  breathe.  Nobody  had  ever  seen 
a  blacksnake  do  it,  and  nobody  had  ever  seen  a  hoop- 
snake,  but  the  boys  believed  there  was  such  a  snake, 
and  that  he  would  take  his  tail  in  his  mouth,  when  he 
got  after  a  person,  and  roll  himself  along  swifter  than 
the  fastest  race-horse  could  run.     He  did  not  bite,  but 


FANTASIES    AND    SUPERSTITIONS.  201 

when  he  came  up  with  you  he  would  take  the  point  of 
his  tail  out  of  his  mouth  and  strike  it  into  you.  If  he 
struck  his  tail  into  a  tree,  the  tree  would  die.  My  boy 
had  seen  a  boy  who  had  been  chased  by  a  hoop-snake, 
but  he  had  not  seen  the  snake,  though  for  the  matter 
of  that  the  boy  who  had  been  chased  by  it  had  not 
seen  it  either  ;  he  did  not  stop  to  see  it.  Another  kind 
of  snake  that  was  very  strange  was  a  hair-snake.  No 
one  had  ever  seen  it  happen,  but  every  one  knew  that 
if  you  put  long  horsehairs  into  a  puddle  of  water  and 
let  them  stay,  they  would  turn  into  hair-snakes ;  and 
when  you  drank  out  of  a  spring  you  had  to  be  careful 
not  to  swallow  a  hair-snake,  or  it  would  remain  in  your 
stomach  and  grow  there. 

When  you  saw  a  lizard,  you  had  to  keep  your  mouth 
tight  shut,  or  else  the  lizard  would  run  down  your  throat 
before  you  knew  it.  That  was  what  all  the  boys  said, 
and  my  boy  believed  it,  though  he  had  never  heard  of 
anybody  that  it  happened  to.  He  believed  that  if  you 
gave  a  chicken-cock  burnt  brandy  it  could  lay  eggs,  and 
that  if  you  gave  a  boy  burnt  brandy  it  would  stop  his 
growing.  That  was  the  way  the  circus-men  got  their 
dwarfs,  and  the  India-rubber  man  kept  himself  limber 
by  rubbing  his  joints  with  rattlesnake  oil. 

A  snake  could  charm  a  person,  and  when  you  saw  a 
snake  you  had  to  kill  it  before  it  could  get  its  eye  on 
you  or  it  would  charm  you.  Snakes  always  charmed 
birds ;  and  there  were  mysterious  powers  of  the  air 
and  forces  of  nature  that  a  boy  had  to  be  on  his  guard 
against,  just  as  a  bird  had  to  look  out  for  snakes.  You 
must  not  kill  a  granddaddy-long-legs,  or  a  lady-bug ; 
it  was  bad  luck.  My  boy  believed,  or  was  afraid  he 
believed,  that 


202  A   BOY'S   TOWN. 

"  What  you  dream  Monday  morning  before  daylight 
Will  come  true  before  Saturday  night," 

but  if  it  was  something  bad,  you  could  keep  it  from 
coming  true  by  not  telling  your  dream  till  you  had  eaten 
breakfast.  He  governed  his  little,  foolish,  frightened 
life  not  only  by  the  maxims  he  had  learned  out  of  his 
"  Gesta  Eomanorum,"  but  by  common  sayings  of  all 
sorts,  such  as 

"  See  a  pin  and  leave  it  lay 
You'll  have  bad  luck  all  the  day," 

and  if  ever  he  tried  to  rebel  against  this  slavery,  and 
went  by  a  pin  in  the  path,  his  fears  tormented  him  till 
he  came  back  and  picked  it  up.  He  would  not  put  on 
his  left  stocking  first,  for  that  was  bad  luck ;  but  be- 
sides these  superstitions,  which  were  common  to  all  the 
boys,  he  invented  superstitions  of  his  own,  with  which 
he  made  his  life  a  burden.  He  did  not  know  why,  but 
he  would  not  step  upon  the  cracks  between  the  paving- 
stones,  and  some  days  he  had  to  touch  every  tree  or 
post  along  the  sidewalk,  as  Doctor  Johnson  did  in  his  time, 
though  the  boy  had  never  heard  of  Doctor  Johnson  then. 
While  he  was  yet  a  very  little  fellow,  he  had  the 
distorted,  mistaken  piety  of  childhood.  He  had  an 
abject  terror  of  dying,  but  it  seemed  to  him  that  if  a 
person  could  die  right  in  the  centre  isle  of  the  church — 
the  Methodist  church  where  his  mother  used  to  go  be- 
fore she  became  finally  a  New  Churchwoman  —  the 
chances  of  that  person's  going  straight  to  heaven  would 
be  so  uncommonly  good  that  he  need  have  very  little 
anxiety  about  it.  He  asked  his  mother  if  she  did  not 
think  so  too,  holding  by  her  hand  as  they  came  out  of 
church  together,  and  he  noticed  the  sort  of  gravity  and 


FANTASIES  AND   SUPERSTITIONS.  203 

even  pain  with  which  she  and  his  father  received  this 
revelation  of  his  darkling  mind.  They  tried  to  teach 
him  what  they  thought  of  such  things  ;  but  though 
their  doctrine  caught  his  fancy  and  flattered  his  love 
of  singularity,  he  was  not  proof  against  the  crude  su- 
perstitions of  his  mates.  He  thought  for  a  time  that 
there  was  a  Bad  Man,  but  this  belief  gave  way  when 
he  heard  his  father  laughing  about  a  certain  clergyman 
who  believed  in  a  personal  devil. 

The  boys  said  the  world  was  going  to  be  burned  up 
some  time,  and  my  boy  expected  the  end  with  his  full 
share  of  the  trouble  that  it  must  bring  to  every  sinner. 
His  fears  were  heightened  by  the  fact  that  his  grand- 
father believed  this  end  was  very  near  at  hand,  and  was 
prepared  for  the  second  coming  of  Christ  at  any  mo- 
ment. Those  were  the  days  when  the  minds  of  many 
were  stirred  by  this  fear  or  hope  ;  the  believers  had 
their  ascension  robes  ready,  and  some  gave  away  their 
earthly  goods  so  as  not  to  be  cumbered  with  anything 
in  their  heavenward  flight.  At  home,  my  boy  heard  his 
father  jest  at  the  crazy  notion,  and  make  fun  of  the  be- 
lievers ;  but  abroad,  among  the  boys,  he  took  the  tint 
of  the  prevailing  gloom.  One  awful  morning  at  school, 
it  suddenly  became  so  dark  that  the  scholars  could  not 
see  to  study  their  lessons,  and  then  the  boys  knew  that 
the  end  of  the  world  was  coming.  There  were  no 
clouds,  as  for  a  coming  storm,  but  the  air  was  black- 
ened almost  to  the  dusk  of  night;  the  school  was  dis- 
missed, and  my  boy  went  home  to  find  the  candles 
lighted,  and  a  strange  gloom  and  silence  on  everything 
outside.  He  remembered  entering  into  this  awful  time, 
but  he  no  more  remembered  coming  out  of  it  than  if 
the  earth  had  really  passed  away  in  fire  and  smoke. 


204  A   BOY'S    TOWN. 

He  early  heard  of  forebodings  and  presentiments, 
and  he  tried  hard  against  his  will  to  have  them,  because 
he  was  so  afraid  of  having  them.  For  the  same  reason 
he  did  his  best,  or  his  worst,  to  fall  into  a  trance,  in 
which  he  should  know  everything  that  was  going  on 
about  him,  all  the  preparations  for  his  funeral,  all  the 
sorrow  and  lamentation,  but  should  be  unable  to  move 
or  speak,  and  only  be  saved  at  the  last  moment  by 
some  one  putting  a  mirror  to  his  lips  and  finding  a 
little  blur  of  mist  on  it.  Sometimes  when  he  was  be- 
ginning to  try  to  write  things  and  to  imagine  charac- 
ters, if  he  imagined  a  character's  dying,  then  he  became 
afraid  he  was  that  character,  and  was  going  to  die. 

Once,  he  woke  up  in  the  night  and  found  the  full 
moon  shining  into  his  room  in  a  very  strange  and  phan- 
tasmal way,  and  washing  the  floor  with  its  pale  light, 
and  somehow  it  came  into  his  mind  that  he  was  going 
to  die  when  he  was  sixteen  years  old.  He  could  then 
only  have  been  nine  or  ten,  but  the  perverse  fear  sank 
deep  into  his  soul,  and  became  an  increasing  torture 
till  he  passed  his  sixteenth  birthday  and  entered  upon 
the  year  in  which  he  had  appointed  himself  to  die. 
The  agony  was  then  too  great  for  him  to  bear  alone 
any  longer,  and  with  shame  he  confessed  his  doom  to 
his  father.  "  Why,"  his  father  said,  "  you  are  in  your 
seventeenth  year  now.  It  is  too  late  for  you  to  die  at 
sixteen,"  and  all  the  long -gathering  load  of  misery 
dropped  from  the  boy's  soul,  and  he  lived  till  his  sev- 
enteenth birthday  and  beyond  it  without  further  trouble. 
If  he  had  known  that  he  would  be  in  his  seventeenth 
year  as  soon  as  he  was  sixteen,  he  might  have  arranged 
his  presentiment  differently. 


XVIII. 

THE    NATUKE   OF   BOYS. 

I  tell  these  things  about  my  boy,  not  so  much  be- 
cause they  were  peculiar  to  him  as  because  I  think  they 
are,  many  of  them,  common  to  all  boys.  One  tire- 
some fact  about  boys  is  that  they  are  so  much  alike ; 
or  used  to  be.  They  did  not  wish  to  be  so,  but  they 
could  not  help  it.  They  did  not  even  know  they  were 
alike ;  and  my  boy  used  to  suffer  in  ways  that  he  be- 
lieved no  boy  had  ever  suffered  before ;  but  as  he  grew 
older  he  found  that  boys  had  been  suffering  in  exactly 
the  same  way  from  the  beginning  of  time.  In  the 
world  you  will  find  a  great  many  grown-up  boys,  with 
gray  beards  and  grandchildren,  who  think  that  they 
have  been  different  their  whole  lives  through  from  other 
people,  and  are  the  victims  of  destiny.  That  is  because 
with  all  their  growing  they  have  never  grown  to  be 
men,  but  have  remained  a  sort  of  cry-babies.  The  first 
thing  you  have  to  learn  here  below  is  that  in  essentials 
you  are  just  like  every  one  else,  and  that  you  are  dif- 
ferent from  others  only  in  what  is  not  so  much  worth 
while.  If  you  have  anything  in  common  with  your 
fellow-creatures,  it  is  something  that  God  gave  you ;  if 
you  have  anything  that  seems  quite  your  own,  it  is 
from  your  silly  self,  and  is  a  sort  of  perversion  of  what 
came  to  you  from  the  Creator  who  made  you  out  of 
himself,  and  had  nothing  else  to  make  any  one  out  of. 


206  A   BOY'S   TOWN. 

There  is  not  really  any  difference  between  yon  and 
your  fellow  -  creatures ;  but  only  a  seeming  difference 
that  flatters  and  cheats  you  with  a  sense  of  your  strange- 
ness, and  makes  you  think  you  are  a  remarkable  fellow. 

There  is  a  difference  between  boys  and  men,  but  it  is 
a  difference  of  self-knowledge  chiefly.  A  boy  wants  to 
do  everything  because  he  does  not  know  he  cannot ;  a 
man  wants  to  do  something  because  he  knows  he  cannot 
do  everything ;  a  boy  always  fails,  and  a  man  sometimes 
succeeds  because  the  man  knows  and  the  boy  does  not 
know.  A  man  is  better  than  a  boy  because  he  knows 
better ;  he  has  learned  by  experience  that  what  is  a  harm 
to  others  is  a  greater  harm  to  himself,  and  he  would 
rather  not  do  it.  But  a  boy  hardly  knows  what  harm 
is,  and  he  does  it  mostly  without  realizing  that  it  hurts. 
He  cannot  invent  anything,  he  can  only  imitate  ;  and  it 
is  easier  to  imitate  evil  than  good.  You  can  imitate  war, 
but  how  are  you  going  to  imitate  peace  ?  So  a  boy  passes 
his  leisure  in  contriving  mischief.  If  you  get  another 
fellow  to  walk  into  a  wasp's  camp,  you  can  see  him 
jump  and  hear  him  howl,  but  if  you  do  not,  then  noth- 
ing at  all  happens.  If  you  set  a  dog  to  chase  a  cat  up 
a  tree,  then  something  has  been  done ;  but  if  you  do 
not  set  the  dog  on  the  cat,  then  the  cat  just  lies  in  the 
sun  and  sleeps,  and  you  lose  your  time.  If  a  boy  could 
find  out  some  way  of  doing  good,  so  that  he  could  be 
active  in  it,  very  likely  he  would  want  to  do  good  now 
and  then  ;  but  as  he  cannot,  he  very  seldom  wants  to 
do  good. 

Or  at  least  he  did  not  want  to  do  good  in  my  boy's 
time.  Things  may  be  changed  now,  for  I  have  been 
talking  of  boys  as  they  were  in  the  Boy's  Town  forty 
years  ago.     For  anything  that  I  really  know  to  the 


THE   NATTTKE   OF   BOYS.  207 

contrary,  a  lot  of  fellows  when  they  get  together  now 
may  plot  good  deeds  of  all  kinds,  but  when  more  than 
a  single  one  of  them  was  together  then  they  plotted 
mischief.  When  I  see  five  or  six  boys  now  lying  un- 
der a  tree  on  the  grass,  and  they  fall  silent  as  I  pass 
them,  I  have  no  right  to  say  that  they  are  not  arranging 
to  go  and  carry  some  poor  widow's  winter  wood  into 
her  shed  and  pile  it  neatly  up  for  her,  and  wish  to  keep 
it  a  secret  from  everybody ;  but  forty  years  ago  I  should 
have  had  good  reason  for  thinking  that  they  were  de- 
bating how  to  tie  a  piece  of  her  clothes-line  along  the 
ground  so  that  when  her  orphan  boy  came  out  for  an 
armload  of  wood  after  dark,  he  would  trip  on  it  and 
send  his  wood  flying  all  over  the  yard. 

This  would  not  be  a  sign  that  they  were  morally 
any  worse  than  the  boys  who  read  Harper's  Young 
People,  and  who  would  every  one  die  rather  than  do 
such  a  cruel  thing,  but  that  they  had  not  really  thought 
much  about  it.  I  dare  say  that  if  a  crowd  of  the 
Young  People's  readers,  from  eight  to  eleven  years  old, 
got  together,  they  would  choose  the  best  boy  among 
them  to  lead  them  on  in  works  of  kindness  and  useful- 
ness ;  but  I  am  very  sorry  to  say  that  in  the  Boy's  Town 
such  a  crowd  of  boys  would  have  followed  the  lead  of 
the  worst  boy  as  far  as  they  dared.  Not  all  of  them 
would  have  been  bad,  and  the  worst  of  them  would 
not  have  been  very  bad ;  but  they  would  have  been 
restless  and  thoughtless.  I  am  not  ready  to  say  that 
boys  now  are  not  wise  enough  to  be  good ;  but  in  that 
time  and  town  they  certainly  were  not.  In  their  ideals 
and  ambitions  they  were  foolish,  and  in  most  of  their 
intentions  they  were  mischievous.  Without  realizing 
that  it  was  evil,  they  meant  more  evil  than  it  would 


208  A   BOY'S   TOWN. 

have  been  possible  for  ten  times  as  many  boys  to  com- 
mit. If  the  half  of  it  were  now  committed  by  men,  the 
United  States  would  be  such  an  awful  place  that  the 
decent  people  would  all  want  to  go  and  live  in  Canada. 

I  have  often  read  in  stories  of  boys  who  were  fond 
of  nature,  and  loved  her  sublimity  and  beauty,  but  I  do 
not  believe  boys  are  ever  naturally  fond  of  nature. 
They  want  to  make  use  of  the  woods  and  fields  and 
rivers ;  and  when  they  become  men  they  find  these  as- 
pects of  nature  endeared  to  them  by  association,  and  so 
they  think  that  they  were  dear  for  their  own  sakes ;  but 
the  taste  for  nature  is  as  purely  acquired  as  the  taste 
for  poetry  or  the  taste  for  tomatoes.  I  have  often  seen 
boys  wondering  at  the  rainbow,  but  it  was  wonder,  not 
admiration  that  moved  them ;  and  I  have  seen  them  ex- 
cited by  a  storm,  but  because  the  storm  was  tremendous, 
not  because  it  was  beautiful. 

I  never  knew  a  boy  who  loved  flowers,  or  cared  for 
their  decorative  qualities ;  if  any  boy  had  gathered 
flowers  the  other  boys  would  have  laughed  at  him  ; 
though  boys  gather  every  kind  of  thing  that  they  think 
will  be  of  the  slightest  use  or  profit.  I  do  not  believe 
they  appreciate  the  perfume  of  flowers,  and  I  am  sure 
that  they  never  mind  the  most  noisome  stench  or  the 
most  loathsome  sight.  A  dead  horse  will  draw  a  crowd 
of  small  boys,  who  will  dwell  without  shrinking  upon 
the  details  of  his  putrefaction,  when  they  would  pass 
by  a  rose-tree  in  bloom  with  indifference.  Hideous 
reptiles  and  insects  interest  them  more  than  the  loveli- 
est form  of  leaf  or  blossom.  Their  senses  have  none 
of  the  delicacy  which  they  acquire  in  after-life. 

They  are  not  cruel,  that  is,  they  have  no  delight  in 
giving  pain,  as  a  general  thing  ;  but  they  do  cruel  things 


THE   NATUKE    OF   BOYS.  209 

out  of  curiosity,  to  see  how  their  victims  will  act.  Still, 
even  in  this  way,  I  never  saw  many  cruel  things  done. 
If  another  boy  gets  hurt  they  laugh,  because  it  is  funny 
to  see  him  hop  or  hear  him  yell ;  but  they  do  not  laugh 
because  they  enjoy  his  pain,  though  they  do  not  pity 
him  unless  they  think  he  is  badly  hurt ;  then  they  are 
scared,  and  try  to  comfort  him.  To  bait  a  hook  they 
tear  an  angle-worm  into  small  pieces,  or  impale  a  grub 
without  flinching ;  they  go  to  the  slaughter-house  and 
see  beeves  knocked  in  the  head  without  a  tremor.  They 
acquaint  themselves,  at  any  risk,  with  all  that  is  going 
on  in  the  great  strange  world  they  have  come  into ; 
and  they  do  not  pick  or  choose  daintily  among  the  facts 
and  objects  they  encounter.  To  them  there  is  neither 
foul  nor  fair,  clean  nor  unclean.  They  have  not  the 
least  discomfort  from  being  dirty  or  unkempt,  and  they 
certainly  find  no  pleasure  in  being  washed  and  combed 
and  clad  in  fresh  linen.  They  do  not  like  to  see  other 
boys  so;  if  a  boy  looking  sleek  and  smooth  came 
among  the  boys  that  my  boy  went  with  in  the  Boy's 
Town,  they  made  it  a  reproach  to  him,  and  hastened  to 
help  him  spoil  his  clothes  and  his  nice  looks.  Some 
of  those  boys  had  hands  as  hard  as  horn,  cracked  open 
at  the  knuckles  and  in  the  palms,  and  the  crevices  black- 
ened with  earth  or  grime ;  and  they  taught  my  boy  to 
believe  that  he  was  an  inferior  and  unmanly  person, 
almost  of  the  nature  of  a  cry-baby,  because  his  hands 
were  not  horn-like,  and  cracked  open,  and  filled  with 
dirt. 

He  had  comrades  enough  and  went  with  everybody, 
but  till  he  formed  that  friendship  with  the  queer  fellow 
whom  I  have  told  of,  he  had  no  friend  among  the  boys ; 
and  I  very  much  doubt  whether  small  boys  understand 


210  A  BOY'S   TOWN. 

friendship,  or  can  feel  it  as  they  do  afterwards,  in  its 
tenderness  and  unselfishness.  In  fact  they  have  no 
conception  of  generosity.  They  are  wasteful  with  what 
they  do  not  want  at  the  moment ;  but  their  instinct  is 
to  get  and  not  to  give.  In  the  Boy's  Town,  if  a  fellow 
appeared  at  his  gate  with  a  piece  of  bread  spread  with 
apple-butter  and  sugar  on  top,  the  other  fellows  flocked 
round  him  and  tried  to  flatter  him  out  of  bites  of  it, 
though  they  might  be  at  that  moment  almost  bursting 
with  surfeit.  To  get  a  bite  was  so  much  clear  gain, 
and  when  they  had  wheedled  one  from  the  owner  of 
the  bread,  they  took  as  large  a  bite  as  their  mouths 
could  stretch  to,  and  they  had  neither  shame  nor  regret 
for  their  behavior,  but  mocked  his  just  resentment. 

The  instinct  of  getting,  of  hoarding,  was  the  motive 
of  all  their  foraging ;  they  had  no  other  idea  of  proper- 
ty than  the  bounty  of  nature  ;  and  this  was  well  enough 
as  far  as  it  went,  but  their  impulse  was  not  to  share 
this  bounty  with  others,  but  to  keep  it  each  for  himself. 
They  hoarded  nuts  and  acorns,  and  hips  and  haws,  and 
then  they  wasted  them ;  and  they  hoarded  other  things 
merely  from  the  greed  of  getting,  and  with  no  possible 
expectation  of  advantage.  It  might  be  well  enough  to 
catch  bees  in  hollyhocks,  and  imprison  them  in  under- 
ground cells  with  flowers  for  them  to  make  honey  from ; 
but  why  accumulate  fire-flies  and  even  dor-bugs  in  small 
brick  pens?  Why  heap  together  mussel  -  shells ;  and 
what  did  a  boy  expect  to  do  with  all  the  marbles  he 
won  ?  You  could  trade  marbles  for  tops,  but  they  were 
not  money,  like  pins  ;  and  why  were  pins  money  ?  Why 
did  the  boys  instinctively  choose  them  for  their  cur- 
rency, and  pay  everything  with  them  ?  There  were 
certain  very  rigid  laws  about  them,  and  a  bent  pin 


THE   NATURE   OF   BOYS.  211 

could  not  be  passed  among  the  boys  any  more  than  a 
counterfeit  coin  among  men.  There  were  fixed  prices  ; 
three  pins  would  buy  a  bite  of  apple ;  six  pins  would 
pay  your  way  into  a  circus  ;  and  so  on.  But  where  did 
these  pins  come  from  or  go  to ;  and  what  did  the  boys 
expect  to  do  with  them  all?  No  boy  knew.  From 
time  to  time  several  boys  got  together  and  decided  to 
keep  store,  and  then  other  boys  decided  to  buy  of  them 
with  pins ;  but  there  was  no  calculation  in  the  scheme  ; 
and  though  I  have  read  of  boys,  especially  in  English 
books,  who  made  a  profit  out  of  their  fellows,  I  never 
knew  any  boy  who  had  enough  forecast  to  do  it.  They 
were  too  wildly  improvident  for  anything  of  the  kind, 
and  if  they  had  any  virtue  at  all  it  was  scorn  of  the 
vice  of  stinginess. 

They  were  savages  in  this  as  in  many  other  things, 
but  noble  savages ;  and  they  were  savages  in  such  brav- 
ery as  they  showed.  That  is,  they  were  venturesome, 
but  not  courageous  with  the  steadfast  courage  of  civil- 
ized men.  They  fought,  and  then  ran  ;  and  they  never 
fought  except  with  some  real  or  fancied  advantage. 
They  were  grave,  like  Indians,  for  the  most  part;  and 
they  were  noisy  without  being  gay.  They  seldom 
laughed,  except  at  the  pain  or  shame  of  some  one ;  I 
think  they  had  no  other  conception  of  a  joke,  though 
they  told  what  they  thought  were  funny  stories,  most- 
ly about  some  Irishman  just  come  across  the  sea,  but 
without  expecting  any  one  to  laugh.  In  fact,  life  was 
a  very  serious  affair  with  them.  They  lived  in  a  state 
of  outlawry,  in  the  midst  of  invisible  terrors,  and  they 
knew  no  rule  but  that  of  might. 

I  am  afraid  that  Harper's  Young  People,  or  rather 
the  mothers  of  Harper's  Young  People,  may  think  I  am 


212  A  boy's  town. 

painting  a  very  gloomy  picture  of  the  natives  of  the 
Boy's  Town ;  hut  I  do  not  pretend  that  what  I  say  of 
the  boys  of  forty  years  ago  is  true  of  boys  nowadays, 
especially  the  boys  who  read  Harper's  Young  People. 
I  understand  that  these  boys  always  like  to  go  tidily 
dressed  and  to  keep  themselves  neat ;  and  that  a  good 
many  of  them  carry  canes.  They  would  rather  go  to 
school  than  fish,  or  hunt,  or  swim,  any  day ;  and  if  one 
of  their  teachers  were  ever  to  offer  them  a  holiday, 
they  would  reject  it  by  a  vote  of  the  whole  school. 
They  never  laugh  at  a  fellow  when  he  hurts  himself  or 
tears  his  clothes.  They  are  noble  and  self-sacrificing 
friends,  and  they  carry  out  all  their  undertakings. 
They  often  have  very  exciting  adventures  such  as  my 
boy  and  his  mates  never  had ;  they  rescue  one  another 
from  shipwreck  and  Indians ;  and  if  ever  they  are 
caught  in  a  burning  building,  or  cast  away  on  a  des- 
olate island,  they  know  just  exactly  what  to  do. 

But,  I  am  ashamed  to  say,  it  was  all  very  different  in 
the  Boy's  Town ;  and  I  might  as  well  make  a  clean 
breast  of  it  while  I  am  about  it.  The  fellows  in  that 
town  were  every  one  dreadfully  lazy  —  that  is,  they 
never  wanted  to  do  any  thing  they  were  set  to  do ;  but 
if  they  set  themselves  to  do  anything,  they  would  work 
themselves  to  death  at  it.  In  this  alone  I  understand 
that  they  differed  by  a  whole  world's  difference  from 
the  boys  who  read  Harper's  Young  People.  I  am  al- 
most afraid  to  confess  how  little  moral  strength  most 
of  those  long-ago  boys  had.  A  fellow  would  be  very 
good  at  home,  really  and  truly  good,  and  as  soon  as  he 
got  out  with  the  other  fellows  he  would  yield  to  almost 
any  temptation  to  mischief  that  offered,  and  if  none  of- 
fered he  would  go  and  hunt  one  up,  and  would  never 


THE    NATURE    OF   BOYS.  213 

stop  till  he  had  found  one,  and  kept  at  it  till  it  over- 
came him.  The  spirit  of  the  boy's  world  is  not  wicked, 
but  merely  savage,  as  I  have  often  said  in  this  book ;  i\j 
is  the  spirit  of  not  knowing  better.  That  is,  the  pre- 
vailing spirit  is  so.  Here  and  there  a  boy  does  know 
better,  but  he  is  seldom  a  leader  among  boys  ;  and  usu- 
ally he  is  ashamed  of  knowing  better,  and  rarely  tries 
to  do  better  than  the  rest.  He  would  like  to  please  his 
father  and  mother,  but  he  dreads  the  other  boys  and 
what  they  will  say ;  and  so  the  light  of  home  fades 
from  his  ignorant  soul,  and  leaves  him  in  the  outer 
darkness  of  the  street.  It  may  be  that  it  must  be  so ; 
but  it  seems  a  great  pity ;  and  it  seems  somehow  as  if 
the  father  and  the  mother  might  keep  with  him  in  some 
word,  some  thought,  and  be  there  to  help  him  against 
himself,  whenever  he  is  weak  and  wavering.  The 
trouble  is  that  the  father  and  mother  are  too  often  chil- 
dren in  their  way,  and  little  more  fit  to  be  the  guide 
than  he. 

But  while  I  am  owning  to  a  good  deal  that  seems  to 
me  lamentably  wrong  in  the  behavior  of  the  Boy's 
Town  boys,  I  ought  to  remember  one  or  two  things  to 
their  credit.  They  had  an  ideal  of  honor,  false  enough 
as  far  as  resenting  insult  went,  but  true  in  some  other 
things.  They  were  always  respectful  to  women,  and  if 
a  boy's  mother  ever  appeared  among  them,  to  interfere 
in  behalf  of  her  boy  when  they  were  abusing  him,  they 
felt  the  indecorum,  but  they  were  careful  not  to  let  her 
feel  it.  They  would  not  have  dreamed  of  uttering  a 
rude  or  impudent  word  to  her ;  they  obeyed  her,  and 
they  were  even  eager  to  serve  her,  if  she  asked  a  favor 
of  them. 

For  the  most  part,  also,  they  were  truthful,  and  they 


214  A   BOY'S   TOWN. 

only  told  lies  when  they  felt  obliged  to  do  so,  as  when 
they  had  been  in  swimming  and  said  they  had  not,  or 
as  when  they  wanted  to  get  away  from  some  of  the 
boys,  or  did  not  wish  the  whole  crowd  to  know  what 
they  were  doing.  But  they  were  generally  shamefaced 
in  these  lies ;  and  the  fellows  who  could  lie  boldly  and 
stick  to  it  were  few.  In  the  abstract  lying  was  held  in 
such  contempt  that  if  any  boy  said  you  were  a  liar 
you  must  strike  him.  That  was  not  to  be  borne  for  an 
instant,  any  more  than  if  he  had  called  you  a  thief. 

I  never  knew  a  boy  who  was  even  reputed  to  have 
stolen  anything,  among  all  the  boys,  high  and  low,  who 
met  together  and  played  in  a  perfect  social  equality ; 
and  cheating  in  any  game  was  despised.  To  break 
bounds,  to  invade  an  orchard  or  garden,  was  an  advent- 
ure which  might  be  permitted ;  but  even  this  was  un- 
common, and  most  of  the  boys  saw  the  affair  in  the 
true  light,  and  would  not  take  part  in  it,  though  it  was 
considered  fair  to  knock  apples  off  a  tree  that  hung 
over  the  fence ;  and  if  you  were  out  walnutting  you 
might  get  over  the  fence  in  extreme  cases,  and  help 
yourself.  If  the  owner  of  the  orchard  was  supposed  to 
be  stingy  you  might  do  it  to  plague  him.  But  the 
standard  of  honesty  was  chivalrously  high  among  those 
boys  ;  and  I  believe  that  if  ever  we  have  the  equality  in 
this  world  which  so  many  good  men  have  hoped  for, 
theft  will  be  unknown.  Dishonesty  was  rare  even 
among  men  in  the  Boy's  Town,  because  there  was 
neither  wealth  nor  poverty  there,  and  all  had  enough 
and  few  too  much. 


XIX. 

THE   TOWN   ITSELF. 

Of  course  I  do  not  mean  to  tell  what  the  town  was 
as  men  knew  it,  but  only  as  it  appeared  to  the  boys 
who  made  use  of  its  opportunities  for  having  fun.  The 
civic  centre  was  the  court-house,  with  the  county  build- 
ings about  it  in  the  court-house  yard ;  and  the  great 
thing  in  the  court-house  was  the  town  clock.  It  was 
more  important  in  the  boys'  esteem  than  even  the 
wooden  woman,  who  had  a  sword  in  one  hand  and  a 
pair  of  scales  in  the  other.  Her  eyes  were  blinded ; 
and  the  boys  believed  that  she  would  be  as  high  as  a 
house  if  she  stood  on  the  ground.  She  was  above  the 
clock,  which  was  so  far  up  in  the  air,  against  the  sum- 
mer sky  which  was  always  blue,  that  it  made  your  neck 
ache  to  look  up  at  it ;  and  the  bell  was  so  large  that 
once  when  my  boy  was  a  very  little  fellow,  and  was  in 
the  belfry  with  his  brother,  to  see  if  they  could  get 
some  of  the  pigeons  that  nested  there,  and  the  clock 
began  to  strike,  it  almost  smote  him  dead  with  the  ter- 
ror of  its  sound,  and  he  felt  his  heart  quiver  with  the 
vibration  of  the  air  between  the  strokes.  It  seemed  to 
him  that  he  should  never  live  to  get  down ;  and  he 
never  knew  how  he  did  get  down.  He  could  remember 
being  in  the  court-house  after  that,  one  night  when  a 
wandering  professor  gave  an  exhibition  in  the  court- 
room, and  showed  the  effects  of  laughing-gas  on  such 


216  A  boy's  town. 

men  and  boys  as  were  willing  to  breathe  it.  It  was  the 
same  gas  that  dentists  now  give  when  they  draw  teeth ; 
but  it  was  then  used  to  make  people  merry  and  truth- 
ful, to  make  them  laugh  and  say  just  what  they  thought. 
My  boy  was  too  young  to  know  whether  it  did  either ; 
but  he  was  exactly  the  right  age,  when  on  another  night 
there  was  a  large  picture  of  Death  on  a  Pale  Horse 
shown,  to  be  harrowed  to  the  bottom  of  his  soul  by  its 
ghastliness.  When  he  was  much  older,  his  father  urged 
him  to  go  to  the  court-house  and  hear  the  great  Cor- 
win,  whose  Mexican  War  speech  he  had  learned  so  much 
of  by  heart,  arguing  a  case ;  but  the  boy  was  too  bash- 
ful to  go  in  when  he  got  to  the  door,  and  came  back 
and  reported  that  he  was  afraid  they  would  make  him 
swear.  He  was  sometimes  in  the  court-house  yard,  at 
elections  and  celebrations ;  and  once  he  came  from 
school  at  recess  with  some  other  boys  and  explored  the 
region  of  the  jail.  Two  or  three  prisoners  were  at  the 
window,  and  they  talked  to  the  boys  and  joked ;  and 
the  boys  ran  off  again  and  played ;  and  the  prisoners 
remained  like  unreal  things  in  my  boy's  fancy.  Per- 
haps if  it  were  not  for  this  unreality  which  misery 
puts  on  for  the  happy  when  it  is  out  of  sight,  no  one 
could  be  happy  in  a  world  where  there  is  so  much 
misery. 

The  school  was  that  first  one  which  he  went  to,  in 
the  basement  of  a  church.  It  was  the  Episcopal  church, 
and  he  struggled  for  some  meaning  in  the  word  Epis- 
copal ;  he  knew  that  the  Seceder  church  was  called  so 
because  the  spire  was  cedar ;  a  boy  who  went  to  Sun- 
day-school there  told  him  so.  There  was  a  Methodist 
church,  where  his  grandfather  went ;  and  a  Catholic 
church,  where  that  awful  figure  on  the  cross  was.     No 


THE   TOWN    ITSELF.  217 

doubt  there  were  other  churches ;  but  he  had  nothing 
to  do  with  them. 

Besides  his  grandfather's  drug  and  book  store,  there 
was  another  drug  store,  and  there  were  eight  or  ten  dry- 
goods  stores,  where  every  spring  the  boys  were  taken 
to  be  fitted  with  new  straw  hats ;  but  the  store  that  they 
knew  best  was  a  toy-store  near  the  market-house,  kept 
by  a  quaint  old  German,  where  they  bought  their  mar- 
bles and  tops  and  Jew's-harps.  The  store  had  a  high, 
sharp  gable  to  the  street,  and  showed  its  timbers  through 
the  roughcast  of  its  wall,  which  was  sprinkled  with 
broken  glass  that  glistened  in  the  sun.  After  a  while 
the  building  disappeared  like  a  scene  shifted  at  the 
theatre,  and  it  was  probably  torn  down.  Then  the  boys 
found  another  toy  store  ;  but  they  considered  the  dealer 
mean ;  he  asked  very  high  prices,  and  he  said,  when  a 
boy  hung  back  from  buying  a  thing  that  it  was  "  a  very 
superior  article,"  and  the  boys  had  that  for  a  by-word, 
and  they  holloed  it  at  the  storekeeper's  boy  when  they 
wanted  to  plague  him.  There  were  two  bakeries,  and 
at  the  American  bakery  there  were  small  sponge-cakes, 
which  were  the  nicest  cakes  in  the  world,  for  a  cent 
apiece ;  at  the  Dutch  bakery  there  were  pretzels,  with 
salt  and  ashes  sticking  on  them,  that  the  Dutch  boys 
liked ;  but  the  American  boys  made  fun  of  them,  and 
the  bread  at  the  Dutch  bakery  was  always  sour.  There 
were  four  or  five  taverns  where  drink  was  always  sold 
and  drunkards  often  to  be  seen;  and  there  was  one 
Dutch  tavern,  but  the  Dutchmen  generally  went  to  the 
brewery  for  their  beer,  and  drank  it  there.  The  boys 
went  to  the  brewery,  to  get  yeast  for  their  mothers ; 
and  they  liked  to  linger  among  the  great  heaps  of  malt, 
and  the  huge  vats  wreathed  in  steam,  and  sending  out 
15 


218  A  BOY'S   TOWN. 

a  pleasant  smell.  The  floors  were  always  wet,  and  the 
fat,  pale  Dutchmen,  working  about  in  the  vapory  air, 
never  spoke  to  the  boys,  who  were  afraid  of  them. 
They  took  a  boy's  bottle  and  filled  it  with  foaming 
yeast,  and  then  took  his  cent,  all  in  a  silence  so  op- 
pressive that  he  scarcely  dared  to  breathe.  My  boy 
wondered  where  they  kept  the  boy  they  were  bringing 
up  to  drink  beer ;  but  it  would  have  been  impossible  to 
ask.  The  brewery  overlooked  the  river,  and  you  could 
see  the  south  side  of  the  bridge  from  its  back  win- 
dows, and  that  was  very  strange.  It  was  just  like  the 
picture  of  the  bridge  in  "  Howe's  History  of  Ohio,"  and 
that  made  it  seem  like  a  bridge  in  some  far-off  country. 
There  were  two  fire-engines  in  the  Boy's  Town ;  but 
there  seemed  to  be  something  always  the  matter  with 
them,  so  that  they  would  not  work,  if  there  was  a 
fire.  When  there  was  no  fire,  the  companies  some- 
times pulled  them  up  through  the  town  to  the  Basin 
bank,  and  practised  with  them  against  the  roofs  and 
fronts  of  the  pork-houses.  It  was  almost  as  good 
as  a  muster  to  see  the  firemen  in  their  red  shirts  and 
black  trousers,  dragging  the  engine  at  a  run,  two  and 
two  together,  one  on  each  side  of  the  rope.  My  boy 
would  have  liked  to  speak  to  a  fireman,  but  he  never 
dared ;  and  the  foreman  of  the  Neptune,  which  was  the 
larger  and  feebler  of  the  engines,  was  a  figure  of  such 
worshipful  splendor  in  his  eyes  that  he  felt  as  if  he  could 
not  be  just  a  common  human  being.  He  was  a  store- 
keeper, to  begin  with,  and  he  was  tall  and  slim,  and  his 
black  trousers  fitted  him  like  a  glove ;  he  had  a  patent- 
leather  helmet,  and  a  brass  speaking-trumpet,  and  he 
gave  all  his  orders  through  this.  It  did  not  make  any 
difference  how  close  he  was  to  the  men,  he  shouted 


THE   TOWN   ITSELF.  219 

everything  through  the  trumpet ;  and  when  they  manned 
the  breaks  and  began  to  pump,  he  roared  at  them,  "  Down 
on  her,  down  on  her,  boys !"  so  that  you  would  have 
thought  the  Neptune  could  put  out  the  world  if  it  was 
burning  up.  Instead  of  that  there  was  usually  a  feeble 
splutter  from  the  nozzle,  and  sometimes  none  at  all, 
even  if  the  hose  did  not  break ;  it  was  fun  to  see  the 
hose  break.  The  Neptune  was  a  favorite  with  the  boys, 
though  they  believed  that  the  Tremont  could  squirt  far- 
ther, and  they  had  a  belief  in  its  quiet  efficiency  which 
was  fostered  by  its  reticence  in  public.  It  was  small 
and  black,  but  the  Neptune  was  large,  and  painted  of  a 
gay  color  lit  up  with  gilding  that  sent  the  blood  leaping 
through  a  boy's  veins.  The  boys  knew  the  Neptune 
was  out  of  order,  but  they  were  always  expecting  it 
would  come  right,  and  in  the  meantime  they  felt  that  it 
was  an  honor  to  the  town,  and  they  followed  it  as  proud- 
ly back  to  the  engine-house  after  one  of  its  magnificent 
failures  as  if  it  had  been  a  magnificent  success.  The 
boys  were  always  making  magnificent  failures  them- 
selves, and  they  could  feel  for  the  Neptune. 

Before  the  Hydraulic  was  opened,  the  pork-houses 
were  the  chief  public  attraction  to  the  boys,  and  they 
haunted  them,  with  a  thrilling  interest  in  the  mysteries 
of  pork-packing  which  none  of  their  sensibilities  re- 
volted from.  Afterwards,  the  cotton-mills,  which  were 
rather  small  brick  factories,  though  they  looked  so  large 
to  the  boys,  eclipsed  the  pork-house  in  their  regard. 
They  were  all  wild  to  work  in  the  mills  at  first,  and 
they  thought  it  a  hardship  that  their  fathers  would  not 
let  them  leave  school  and  do  it.  Some  few  of  the  fel- 
lows that  my  boy  knew  did  get  to  work  in  the  mills; 
and  one  of  them  got  part  of  his  finger  taken  off  in  the 


220  A  boy's  TOWN. 

machinery ;  it  was  thought  a  distinction  among  the 
boys,  and  something  like  having  been  in  war.  My  boy's 
brother  was  so  crazy  to  try  mill-life  that  he  was  allowed 
to  do  so  for  a  few  weeks  ;  but  a  few  weeks  were  enough 
of  it,  and  pretty  soon  the  feeling  about  the  mills  all 
quieted  down,  and  the  boys  contented  themselves  with 
their  flumes  and  their  wheel-pits,  and  the  head-gates 
that  let  the  water  in  on  the  wheels;  sometimes  you 
could  find  fish  under  the  wheels  when  the  mills  were 
not  running.  The  mill-doors  all  had  "  No  Admittance" 
painted  on  them ;  and  the  mere  sight  of  the  forbidding 
words  would  have  been  enough  to  keep  my  boy  away, 
for  he  had  a  great  awe  of  any  sort  of  authority ;  but 
once  he  went  into  the  mill  to  see  his  brother ;  and  an- 
other time  he  and  some  other  boys  got  into  an  empty 
mill,  where  they  found  a  painter  on  an  upper  floor 
painting  a  panorama  of  "  Paradise  Lost."  This  master- 
piece must  have  been  several  hundred  feet  long ;  the 
boys  disputed  whether  it  would  reach  to  the  sawmill 
they  could  see  from  the  windows  if  it  was  stretched  out ; 
and  my  boy  was  surprised  by  the  effects  which  the 
painter  got  out  of  some  strips  of  tinsel  which  he  was 
attaching  to  the  scenery  of  the  lake  of  fire  and  brim- 
stone at  different  points.  The  artist  seemed  satisfied 
himself  with  this  simple  means  of  suggesting  the  gleam 
of  infernal  fires.  He  walked  off  to  a  distance  to  get  it 
in  perspective,  and  the  boys  ventured  so  close  to  the 
paints  which  he  had  standing  about  by  the  bucketful 
that  it  seemed  as  if  he  must  surely  hollo  at  them. 
But  he  did  not  say  anything  or  seem  to  remember 
that  they  were  there.  They  formed  such  a  favorable 
opinion  of  him  and  his  art  that  they  decided  to  have 
a  panorama;  but  it  never  came  to  anything.     In  the 


"the  artist  seemed  satisfied  himself. 


THE    TOWN   ITSELF.  221 

first  place  they  could  not  get  the  paints,  let  alone  the 
muslin. 

Besides  the  bridge,  the  school-houses,  the  court-house 
and  jail,  the  pork-houses  and  the  mills,  there  was  only- 
one  other  public  edifice  in  their  town  that  concerned 
the  boys,  or  that  they  could  use  in  accomplishing  the 
objects  of  their  life,  and  this  was  the  hall  that  was  built 
while  my  boy  could  remember  its  rise,  for  public  amuse- 
ments. It  was  in  this  hall  that  he  first  saw  a  play,  and 
then  saw  so  many  plays,  for  he  went  to  the  theatre  every 
night ;  but  for  a  long  time  it  seemed  to  be  devoted  to 
the  purposes  of  mesmerism.  A  professor  highly  skilled 
in  that  science,  which  has  reappeared  in  these  days  un- 
der the  name  of  hypnotism,  made  a  sojourn  of  some 
weeks  in  the  town,  and  besides  teaching  it  to  classes  of 
learners  who  wished  to  practise  it,  gave  nightly  displays 
of  its  wonders.  He  mesmerized  numbers  of  the  boys, 
and  made  them  do  or  think  whatever  he  said.  He  would 
give  a  boy  a  cane,  and  then  tell  him  it  was  a  snake,  and 
the  boy  would  throw  it  away  like  lightning.  He  would 
get  a  lot  of  boys,  and  mount  them  on  chairs,  and  then 
tell  them  that  they  were  at  a  horse-race,  and  the  boys 
would  gallop  astride  of  their  chairs  round  and  round  till 
he  stopped  them.  Sometimes  he  would  scare  them  al- 
most to  death,  with  a  thunder-storm  that  he  said  was 
coming  on ;  at  other  times  he  would  make  them  go  in 
swimming,  on  the  dusty  floor,  and  they  would  swim  all 
over  it  in  their  best  clothes,  and  would  think  they  were 
in  the  river. 

There  were  some  people  who  did  not  believe  in  the 
professor,  or  the  boys  either.  One  of  these  people  was 
an  officer  of  the  army  who  was  staying  a  while  in  the 
Boy's  Town,  and  perhaps  had  something  to  do  with  re- 


222  A   BOY'S   TOWN. 

cruiting  troops  for  the  Mexican  War.  He  came  to  the 
lecture  one  night,  and  remained  with  others  who  lin- 
gered after  it  was  over  to  speak  with  the  professor.  My 
boy  was  there  with  his  father,  and  it  seemed  to  him  that 
the  officer  smiled  mockingly  at  the  professor ;  angry 
words  passed,  and  then  the  officer  struck  out  at  the 
professor.  In  an  instant  the  professor  put  up  both  his 
fists ;  they  flashed  towards  the  officer's  forehead,  and 
the  officer  tumbled  backwards.  The  boy  could  hardly 
believe  it  had  happened.  It  seemed  unreal,  and  of  the 
dreamlike  quality  that  so  many  facts  in  a  child's  be- 
wildered life  are  of. 

There  were  very  few  places  of  amusement  or  enter- 
tainment in  the  Boy's  Town  that  were  within  a  boy's 
reach.  There  were  at  least  a  dozen  places  where  a  man 
could  get  whiskey,  but  only  one  where  he  could  get  ice- 
cream, and  the  boys  were  mostly  too  poor  and  too  shy 
to  visit  this  resort.  But  there  used  to  be  a  pleasure- 
garden  on  the  outskirts  of  the  town,  which  my  boy  re- 
membered visiting  when  he  was  a  very  little  fellow,  with 
his  brother.  There  were  two  large  old  mulberry-trees 
in  this  garden,  and  one  bore  white  mulberries  and  the 
other  black  mulberries,  and  when  you  had  paid  your  fip 
to  come  in,  you  could  eat  all  the  mulberries  you  wanted, 
for  nothing.  There  was  a  tame  crow  that  my  boy  un- 
derstood could  talk  if  it  liked ;  but  it  only  ran  after 
him,  and  tried  to  bite  his  legs.  Besides  this  attraction, 
there  was  a  labyrinth,  or  puzzle,  as  the  boys  called  it, 
of  paths  that  wound  in  and  out  among  bushes,  so  that 
when  you  got  inside  you  were  lucky  if  you  could  find 
your  way  out.  My  boy,  though  he  had  hold  of  his 
brother's  hand,  did  not  expect  to  get  out ;  he  expected 
to  perish  in  that  labyrinth,  and  he  had  some  notion 


THE   TOWN   ITSELF.  223 

that  his  end  would  be  hastened  by  the  tame  crow.  His 
first  visit  to  the  pleasure-garden  was  his  last;  and  it 
passed  so  wholly  out  of  his  consciousness  that  he  never 
knew  what  became  of  it  any  more  than  if  it  had  been 
taken  up  into  the  clouds. 

He  tasted  ice-cream  there  for  the  first  time,  and  had 
his  doubts  about  it,  though  a  sherry-glass  full  of  it  cost 
a  fip,  and  it  ought  to  have  been  good  for  such  a  sum  as 
that.  Later  in  life,  he  sometimes  went  to  the  saloon 
where  it  was  sold  in  the  town,  and  bashfully  gasped  out 
a  demand  for  a  glass,  and  ate  it  in  some  sort  of  chilly 
back-parlor.  But  the  boys  in  that  town,  if  they  cared 
for  such  luxuries,  did  not  miss  them  much,  and  their 
lives  were  full  of  such  vivid  interests  arising  from  the 
woods  and  waters  all  about  them  that  they  did  not  need 
public  amusements  other  than  those  which  chance  and 
custom  afforded  them.  I  have  tried  to  give  some  notion 
of  the  pleasure  they  got  out  of  the  daily  arrival  of  the 
packet  in  the  Canal  Basin ;  and  it  would  be  very  unjust 
if  I  failed  to  celebrate  the  omnibus  which  was  put  on  in 
place  of  the  old-fashioned  stage-coaches  between  the 
Boy's  Town  and  Cincinnati.  I  dare  say  it  was  of  the 
size  of  the  ordinary  city  omnibus,  but  it  looked  as  large 
to  the  boys  tben  as  a  Pullman  car  would  look  to  a  boy 
now ;  and  they  assembled  for  its  arrivals  and  departures 
with  a  thrill  of  civic  pride  such  as  hardly  any  other  fact 
of  the  place  could  impart. 

My  boy  remembered  coming  from  Cincinnati  in  the 
stage  when  he  was  so  young  that  it  must  have  been 
when  he  first  came  to  the  Boy's  Town.  The  distance 
was  twenty  miles,  and  the  stage  made  it  in  four  hours. 
It  was  this  furious  speed  which  gave  the  child  his  ear- 
liest illusion  of  trees  and  fences  racing  by  while  the 


224  A  boy's  town. 

stage  seemed  to  stand  still.  Several  times  after  that  he 
made  the  journey  with  his  father,  seeming  to  have  been 
gone  a  long  age  before  he  got  back,  and  always  so  home- 
sick that  he  never  had  any  appetite  at  the  tavern  where 
the  stage  stopped  for  dinner  midway.  When  it  started 
back,  he  thought  it  wrould  never  get  off  the  city  pave 
and  out  from  between  its  lines  of  houses  into  the  free 
country.  The  boys  always  called  Cincinnati  "  The  City." 
They  supposed  it  was  the  only  city  in  the  world. 

Of  course  there  was  a  whole  state  of  things  in  the 
Boy's  Town  that  the  boys  never  knew  of,  or  only  knew 
by  mistaken  rumors  and  distorted  glimpses.  They  had 
little  idea  of  its  politics,  or  commerce,  or  religion  that 
was  not  wrong,  and  they  only  concerned  themselves 
with  persons  and  places  so  far  as  they  expected  to 
make  use  of  them.  But  as  they  could  make  very  little 
use  of  grown  persons  or  public  places,  they  kept  away 
from  them,  and  the  Boy's  Town  was,  for  the  most  part, 
an  affair  of  water-courses,  and  fields  and  woods,  and 
the  streets  before  the  houses,  and  the  alleys  behind 
them. 

Nearly  all  the  houses  had  vegetable  gardens,  and 
some  of  them  had  flower-gardens  that  appeared  prince- 
lier  pleasaunces  to  my  boy  than  he  has  ever  seen  since 
in  Europe  or  America.  Very  likely  they  were  not  so 
vast  or  so  splendid  as  they  looked  to  him  then ;  but 
one  of  them  at  least  had  beds  of  tulips  and  nasturtiums, 
and  borders  of  flags  and  pinks,  with  clumps  of  tiger- 
lilies  and  hollyhocks ;  and  in  the  grassy  yard  beside  it 
there  were  high  bushes  full  of  snow-balls,  and  rose-trees 
with  moss-roses  on  them.  In  this  superb  domain  there 
were  two  summer-houses  and  a  shed  where  bee-hives 
stood ;  at  the  end  of  the  garden  was  a,  bath-house,  and 


THE  TOWN   ITSELF.  225 

you  could  have  a  shower-bath,  if  you  were  of  a  mind  to 
bring  the  water  for  it  from  the  pump  in  the  barn-yard. 
But  this  was  all  on  a  scale  of  unequalled  magnificence ; 
and  most  of  the  houses,  which  were  mostly  of  wood, 
just  had  a  good  big  yard  with  plum-trees  and  cherry- 
trees  in  it;  and  a  vegetable  garden  at  one  side  that  the 
boy  hated  to  weed.  My  boy's  grandfather  had  a  large 
and  beautiful  garden,  with  long  arbors  of  grapes  in  it, 
that  the  old  gentleman  trimmed  and  cared  for  himself. 
They  were  delicious  grapes ;  and  there  were  black  cur- 
rants, which  the  grandfather  liked,  because  he  had  liked 
them  when  he  was  a  boy  himself  in  the  old  country,  but 
which  no  Boy's  Town  boy  could  have  been  induced  to 
take  as  a  gracious  gift.  Another  boy  had  a  father  that 
had  a  green-house ;  he  was  a  boy  that  would  let  you 
pull  pie-plant  in  the  garden,  and  would  bring  out  sugar 
to  let  you  eat  it  with  in  the  green-house.  His  cleverness 
was  rewarded  when  his  father  was  elected  governor  of 
the  state  ;  and  what  made  it  so  splendid  was  that  his 
father  was  a  Whig. 

Every  house,  whether  it  had  a  flower-garden  or  not, 
had  a  woodshed,  which  was  the  place  where  a  boy 
mostly  received  his  friends,  and  made  his  kites  and 
wagons,  and  laid  his  plots  and  plans  for  all  the  failures 
of  his  life.  The  other  boys  waited  in  the  woodshed 
when  he  went  in  to  ask  his  mother  whether  he  might 
do  this  or  that,  or  go  somewhere.  A  boy  always  wanted 
to  have  a  stove  in  the  woodshed  and  fit  it  up  for  him- 
self, but  his  mother  would  not  let  him,  because  he  would 
have  been  certain  to  set  the  house  on  fire. 

Each  fellow  knew  the  inside  of  his  own  house  toler- 
ably well,  but  seldom  the  inside  of  another  fellow's 
house,  and  he  knew  the  back-yard  better  than  the  front- 


226  A  B0Tr8   TOWN. 

yard.  If  he  entered  the  house  of  a  friend  at  all,  it  was 
to  wait  for  him  by  the  kitchen-door,  or  to  get  up  to  the 
garret  with  him  by  the  kitchen-stairs.  If  he  sometimes, 
and  by  some  rare  mischance,  found  himself  in  the  liv- 
ing-rooms, or  the  parlor,  he  was  very  unhappy,  and  anx- 
ious to  get  out.  Yet  those  interiors  were  not  of  an 
oppressive  grandeur,  and  one  was  much  like  another. 
The  parlor  had  what  was  called  a  flowered-carpet  or 
gay  pattern  of  ingrain  on  its  floor,  and  the  other  rooms 
had  rag-carpets,  woven  by  some  woman  who  had  a  loom 
for  the  work,  and  dyed  at  home  with  such  native  tints 
as  butternut  and  foreign  colors  as  logwood.  The  rooms 
were  all  heated  with  fireplaces,  where  wood  was  burned, 
and  coal  was  never  seen.  They  were  lit  at  night  with 
tallow-candles,  which  were  mostly  made  by  the  house- 
wife herself,  or  by  lard-oil  glass  lamps.  In  the  winter 
the  oil  would  get  so  stiff  with  the  cold  that  it  had  to 
be  thawed  out  at  the  fire  before  the  lamp  would  burn. 
There  was  no  such  thing  as  a  hot-air  furnace  known ; 
and  the  fire  on  the  hearth  was  kept  over  from  day  to 
day  all  winter  long,  by  covering  a  log  at  night  with 
ashes ;  in  the  morning  it  would  be  a  bed  of  coals. 
There  were  no  fires  in  bedrooms,  or  at  least  not  in  a 
boy's  bedroom,  and  sometimes  he  had  to  break  the  ice 
in  his  pitcher  before  he  could  wash ;  it  did  not  take 
him  very  long  to  dress. 

I  have  said  that  they  burned  wood  for  heating  in  the 
Boy's  Town ;  but  my  boy  could  remember  one  winter 
when  they  burned  ears  of  corn  in  the  printing-office 
stove  because  it  was  cheaper.  I  believe  they  still  some- 
times burn  corn  in  the  West,  when  they  are  too  far 
from  a  market  to  sell  it  at  a  paying  price  ;  but  it  always 
seems  a  sin  and  a  shame  that  in  a  state  pretending  to 


THE  TOWN  ITSELF.  22V 

be  civilized  food  should  ever  be  destroyed  when  so 
many  are  hungry.  When  one  hears  of  such  things  one 
would  almost  think  that  boys  could  make  a  better  state 
than  this  of  the  men. 


XX. 

TRAITS    AND    CHARACTERS. 

In  the  Boy's  Town  a  great  many  men  gave  nearly 
their  whole  time  to  the  affairs  of  the  state,  and  did 
hardly  anything  hut  talk  politics  all  day  ;  they  even  sat 
up  late  at  night  to  do  it.  Among  these  politicians  the 
Whigs  were  sacred  in  my  boy's  eyes,  but  the  Demo- 
crats appeared  like  enemies  of  the  human  race ;  and 
one  of  the  strangest  things  that  ever  happened  to  him 
was  to  find  his  father  associating  with  men  who  came 
out  of  the  Democratic  party  at  the  time  he  left  the 
Whig  party,  and  joining  with  them  in  a  common  cause 
against  both.  But  when  he  understood  what  a  good 
cause  it  was,  and  came  to  sing  songs  against  slavery,  he 
was  reconciled,  though  he  still  regarded  the  Whig  poli- 
ticians as  chief  among  the  great  ones,  if  not  the  good 
ones,  of  the  earth.  When  he  passed  one  of  them  on 
the  street,  he  held  his  breath  for  awe  till  he  got  by, 
which  was  not  always  so  very  soon,  for  sometimes  a 
Whig  statesman  wanted  the  whole  sidewalk  to  himself, 
and  it  was  hard  to  get  by  him.  There  were  other  peo- 
ple in  that  town  who  wanted  the  whole  sidewalk,  and 
these  were  the  professional  drunkards,  whom  the  boys 
regarded  as  the  keystones,  if  not  corner-stones,  of  the 
social  edifice.  There  were  three  or  four  of  them,  and 
the  boys  held  them  all,  rich  and  poor  alike,  in  a  deep 
interest,  if  not  respect,  as  persons  of  peculiar  distinc- 


TKAITS   AND   CHARACTERS.  229 

tion.  I  do  not  think  any  boy  realized  the  tragedy  of 
those  hopeless,  wasted,  slavish  lives.  The  boys  followed 
the  wretched  creatures,  at  a  safe  distance,  and  plagued 
them,  and  ran  whenever  one  of  them  turned  and  threat- 
ened them.  That  was  because  the  boys  had  not  the  expe- 
rience to  enable  them  to  think  rightly,  or  to  think  at  all 
about  such  things,  or  to  know  what  images  of  perdition 
they  had  before  their  eyes  ;  and  when  they  followed  them 
and  teased  them,  they  did  not  know  they  were  joining 
like  fiends  in  the  torment  of  lost  souls.  Some  of  the 
town-drunkards  were  the  outcasts  of  good  homes,  which 
they  had  desolated,  and  some  had  merely  destroyed  in 
themselves  that  hope  of  any  home  which  is  the  light  of 
heaven  in  every  human  heart ;  but  from  time  to  time  a 
good  man  held  out  a  helping  hand  to  one  of  them,  and 
gave  him  the  shelter  of  his  roof,  and  tried  to  reclaim 
him.  Then  the  boys  saw  him  going  about  the  streets, 
pale  and  tremulous,  in  a  second-hand  suit  of  his  bene- 
factor's clothes,  and  fighting  hard  against  the  tempter 
that  beset  him  on  every  side  in  that  town ;  and  then 
some  day  they  saw  him  dead  drunk  in  a  fence  corner ; 
and  they  did  not  understand  how  seven  devils  worse 
than  the  first  had  entered  in  the  place  which  had  been 
swept  and  garnished  for  them. 

Besides  the  town-drunkards  there  were  other  persons 
in  whom  the  boys  were  interested,  like  the  two  or  three 
dandies,  whom  their  splendor  in  dress  had  given  a  pub- 
lic importance  in  a  community  of  carelessly  dressed 
men.  Then  there  were  certain  genteel  loafers,  young 
men  of  good  families,  who  hung  about  the  principal 
hotel,  and  whom  the  boys  believed  to  be  fighters  of 
singular  prowess.  Far  below  these  in  the  social  scale, 
the  boys  had  yet  other  heroes,  such  as  the  Dumb  Negro 


230  A   BOY'S    TOWN. 

and  his  family.  Between  these  and  the  white  people, 
among  whom  the  boys  knew  of  no  distinctions,  they 
were  aware  that  there  was  an  impassable  gulf ;  and  it 
would  not  be  easy  to  give  a  notion  of  just  the  sort  of 
consideration  in  which  they  held  them.  But  they  held 
the  Dumb  Negro  himself  in  almost  superstitious  regard 
as  one  who,  though  a  deaf-mute,  knew  everything  that 
was  going  on,  and  could  make  you  understand  anything 
he  wished.  He  was,  in  fact,  a  master  of  most  eloquent 
pantomime ;  he  had  gestures  that  could  not  be  mis- 
taken, and  he  had  a  graphic  dumb-show  for  persons  and 
occupations  and  experiences  that  was  delightfully  vivid. 
For  a  dentist,  he  gave  an  upward  twist  of  the  hand  from 
his  jaw,  and  uttered  a  howl  which  left  no  doubt  that  he 
meant  tooth-pulling ;  and  for  what  would  happen  to  a 
boy  if  he  kept  on  misbehaving,  he  crossed  his  fingers 
before  his  face  and  looked  through  them  in  a  way  that 
brought  the  jail-window  clearly  before  the  eyes  of  the 
offender. 

The  boys  knew  vaguely  that  his  family  helped  run- 
away slaves  on  their  way  North,  and  in  a  community  that 
was  for  the  most  part  bitterly  pro-slavery  these  negroes 
were  held  in  a  sort  of  respect  for  their  courageous  fidel- 
ity to  their  race.  The  men  were  swarthy,  handsome 
fellows,  not  much  darker  than  Spaniards,  and  they  were 
so  little  afraid  of  the  chances  which  were  often  such 
fatal  mischances  to  colored  people  in  that  day  that 
one  of  them  travelled  through  the  South,  and  passed 
himself  in  very  good  company  as  a  Cherokee  Indian  of 
rank  and  education. 

As  far  as  the  boys  knew,  the  civic  affairs  of  the  place 
were  transacted  entirely  by  two  constables.  Of  mayors 
and  magistrates,  such  as  there  must  have  been,  they 


TRAITS   AND   CHARACTERS.  231 

knew  nothing,  and  they  had  not  the  least  notion  what 
the  Whigs  whom  they  were  always  trying  to  elect  were 
to  do  when  they  got  into  office.  They  knew  that  the 
constables  were  both  Democrats,  but,  if  they  thought  at 
all  about  the  fact,  they  thought  their  Democracy  the 
natural  outcome  of  their  dark  constabulary  nature,  and 
by  no  means  imagined  that  they  were  constables  be- 
cause they  were  Democrats.  The  worse  of  the  two,  or 
the  more  merciless,  was  also  the  town-crier,  whose  office 
is  now  not  anywhere  known  in  America,  I  believe ; 
though  I  heard  a  town-crier  in  a  Swiss  village  not  many 
years  ago.  In  the  Boy's  Town  the  crier  carried  a  good- 
sized  bell ;  when  he  started  out  he  rang  it  till  he  reached 
the  street  corner,  and  then  he  stopped,  and  began  some 
such  proclamation  as,  "  0,  yes  !  O,  yes  !  O,  yes  !  There 
will  be  an  auction  this  evening  at  early  candle-light,  at 
Brown  &  Robinson's  store  !  Dry  goods,  boots  and 
shoes,  hats  and  caps,  hardware,  queen's  ware,  and  so 
forth,  and  so  forth.  Richard  Roe,  Auctioneer !  Come 
one,  come  all,  come  everybody !"  Then  the  crier  rang 
his  bell,  and  went  on  to  the  next  corner,  where  he  re- 
peated his  proclamation.  After  a  while,  the  constable 
got  a  deputy  to  whom  he  made  over  his  business  of 
town-crier.  This  deputy  was  no  other  than  that  reck- 
less boy  who  used  to  run  out  from  the  printing-office 
and  shoot  the  turtle-doves ;  and  he  decorated  his  proc- 
lamation with  quips  and  quirks  of  his  own  invention, 
and  with  personal  allusions  to  his  employer,  who  was 
auctioneer  as  well  as  constable.  But  though  he  was 
hail-fellow  with  every  boy  in  town,  and  although  every 
boy  rejoiced  in  his  impudence,  he  was  so  panoplied  in 
the  awfulness  of  his  relation  to  the  constabulary  func- 
tions that,  however  remote  it  was,  no  boy  would  have 


232  A  boy's  TOWN. 

thought  of  trifling  with  him  when  he  was  on  duty.  If 
ever  a  boy  holloed  something  at  him  when  he  was  out 
with  his  crier's  bell,  he  turned  and  ran  as  hard  as  he 
could,  and  as  if  from  the  constable  himself. 

The  boys  knew  just  one  other  official,  and  that  was 
the  gauger,  whom  they  watched  at  a  respectful  distance, 
when  they  found  him  employed  with  his  mysterious  in- 
struments gauging  the  whiskey  in  the  long  rows  of  bar- 
rels on  the  Basin  bank.  They  did  not  know  what  the 
process  was,  and  I  own  that  I  do  not  know  to  this  day 
what  it  was.  My  boy  watched  him  with  the  rest,  and 
once  he  ventured  upon  a  bold  and  reckless  act.  He  had 
so  long  heard  that  it  was  whiskey  which  made  people 
drunk  that  at  last  the  notion  came  to  have  an  irresistible 
fascination  for  him,  and  he  determined  to  risk  every- 
thing, even  life  itself,  to  know  what  whiskey  was  like. 
As  soon  as  the  gauger  had  left  them,  he  ran  up  to  one 
of  the  barrels  where  he  had  seen  a  few  drops  fall  from 
his  instrument  when  he  lifted  it  from  the  bunghole,  and 
plunged  the  tip  of  his  little  finger  into  the  whiskey,  and 
then  put  it  to  his  tongue.  He  expected  to  become  drunk 
instantly,  if  not  to  end  a  town-drunkard  there  on  the 
spot ;  but  the  whiskey  only  tasted  very  disgusting  ;  and 
he  was  able  to  get  home  without  help.  Still,  I  would 
not  advise  any  other  boy  to  run  the  risk  he  took  in  this 
desperate  experiment. 

There  was  a  time  not  long  after  that  when  he  really 
did  get  drunk,  but  it  was  not  with  whiskey.  One  morn- 
ing after  a  rain,  when  the  boys  were  having  fun  in  one 
of  those  open  canal-boats  with  the  loose  planks  which 
the  over-night  shower  had  set  afloat,  a  fellow  came  up 
and  said  he  had  got  some  tobacco  that  was  the  best 
kind  to  learn  to  chew  with.     Every  boy  who  expected 


TKAITS   AND   CHARACTERS.  233 

to  be  anything  in  the  world  expected  to  chew  tobacco ; 
for  all  the  packet-drivers  chewed ;  and  it  seemed  to  my 
boy  that  his  father  and  grandfather  and  uncles  were 
about  the  only  people  who  did  not  chew.  If  they  had 
only  smoked,  it  would  have  been  something,  but  they 
did  not  even  smoke ;  and  the  boy  felt  that  he  had  a 
long  arrears  of  manliness  to  bring  up,  and  that  he  should 
have  to  retrieve  his  family  in  spite  of  itself  from  the 
shame  of  not  using  tobacco  in  any  form.  He  knew 
that  his  father  abhorred  it,  but  he  had  never  been  ex- 
plicitly forbidden  to  smoke  or  chew,  for  his  father  sel- 
dom forbade  him  anything  explicitly,  and  he  gave  him- 
self such  freedom  of  choice  in  the  matter  that  when  the 
boy  with  the  tobacco  began  to  offer  it  around,  he  judged 
it  right  to  take  a  chew  with  the  rest.  The  boy  said  it 
was  a  peculiar  kind  of  tobacco,  and  was  known  as  mo- 
lasses-tobacco because  it  was  so  sweet.  The  other  boys 
did  not  ask  how  he  came  to  know  its  name,  or  where  he 
got  it;  boys  never  ask  anything  that  it  would  be  well 
for  them  to  know ;  but  they  accepted  his  theory,  and 
his  further  statement  that  it  was  of  a  mildness  singu- 
larly adapted  to  learners,  without  misgiving.  The  boy 
was  himself  chewing  vigorously  on  a  large  quid,  and 
launching  the  juice  from  his  lips  right  and  left  like  a 
grown  person ;  and  my  boy  took  as  large  a  bite  as  his 
benefactor  bade  him.  He  found  it  as  sweet  as  he  had 
been  told  it  was,  and  he  acknowledged  the  aptness  of  its 
name  of  molasses-tobacco ;  it  seemed  to  him  a  golden 
opportunity  to  acquire  a  noble  habit  on  easy  terms.  He 
let  the  quid  rest  in  his  cheek  as  he  had  seen  men  do, 
when  he  was  not  crushing  it  between  his  teeth,  and  for 
some  moments  he  poled  his  plank  up  and  down  the 
canal-boat  with  a  sense  of  triumph  that  nothing  marred. 


234  a  boy's  town. 

Then,  all  of  a  sudden,  he  began  to  feel  pale.  The 
boat  seemed  to  be  going  round,  and  the  sky  wheeling 
overhead ;  the  sun  was  dodging  about  very  strangely. 
Drops  of  sweat  burst  from  the  boy's  forehead ;  he  let 
fall  his  pole,  and  said  that  he  thought  he  would  go 
home.  The  fellow  who  gave  him  tbe  tobacco  began  to 
laugh,  and  the  other  fellows  to  mock,  but  my  boy  did 
not  mind  them.  Somehow,  he  did  not  know  how,  he 
got  out  of  the  canal-boat  and  started  homeward ;  but  at 
every  step  the  ground  rose  as  high  as  his  knees  before 
him,  and  then  when  he  got  his  foot  high  enough,  and 
began  to  put  it  down,  the  ground  was  not  there.  He 
was  deathly  sick,  as  he  reeled  and  staggered  on,  and 
when  he  reached  home,  and  showed  himself  white  and 
haggard  to  his  frightened  mother,  he  had  scarcely 
strength  to  gasp  out  a  confession  of  his  attempt  to  re- 
trieve the  family  honor  by  learning  to  chew  tobacco. 
In  another  moment  nature  came  to  his  relief,  and  then 
he  fell  into  a  deep  sleep  which  lasted  the  whole  after- 
noon, so  that  it  seemed  to  him  the  next  day  when  he 
woke  up,  glad  to  find  himself  alive,  if  not  so  very  lively. 
Perhaps  he  had  swallowed  some  of  the  poisonous  juice 
of  the  tobacco ;  perhaps  it  had  acted  upon  his  brain 
without  that.  His  father  made  no  very  close  inquiry 
into  the  facts,  and  he  did  not  forbid  him  the  use  of  to- 
bacco. It  was  not  necessary ;  in  that  one  little  experi- 
ment he  had  got  enough  for  a  whole  lifetime.  It 
shows  that,  after  all,  a  boy  is  not  so  hard  to  satisfy  in 
everything. 

There  were  some  people  who  believed  that  tobacco 
would  keep  off  the  fever-and-ague,  which  was  so  com- 
mon then  in  that  country,  or  at  any  rate  that  it  was 
good  for  the  toothache.     In  spite  of  the  tobacco,  there 


TBAITS   AND  CHAEACTEES.  235 

were  few  houses  where  ague  was  not  a  familiar  guest, 
however  unwelcome.  If  the  family  was  large,  there 
was  usually  a  chill  every  day ;  one  had  it  one  day,  and 
another  the  next,  so  that  there  was  no  lapse.  This 
was  the  case  in  my  boy's  family,  after  they  moved  to 
the  Faulkner  house,  which  was  near  the  Basin  and  its 
water-soaked  banks ;  but  they  accepted  the  ague  as 
something  quite  in  the  course  of  nature,  and  duly  broke 
it  up  with  quinine.  Some  of  the  boys  had  chills  at 
school ;  and  sometimes,  after  they  had  been  in  swim- 
ming, they  would  wait  round  on  the  bank  till  a  fellow 
had  his  chill  out,  and  then  they  would  all  go  off  to- 
gether and  forget  about  it.  The  next  day  that  fellow 
would  be  as  well  as  any  one ;  the  third  day  his  chill 
would  come  on  again,  but  he  did  not  allow  it  to  inter- 
fere with  his  business  or  pleasure,  and  after  a  while  the 
ague  would  seem  to  get  tired  of  it,  and  give  up  alto- 
gether. That  strange  earth-spirit  who  was  my  boy's 
friend  simply  beat  the  ague,  as  it  were,  on  its  own 
ground.  He  preferred  a  sunny  spot  to  have  his  chill 
in,  a  cosy  fence-corner  or  a  warm  back  door-step,  or  the 
like  ;  but  as  for  the  fever  that  followed  the  chill,  he  took 
no  account  of  it  whatever,  or  at  least  made  no  provision 
for  it. 

The  miasm  which  must  have  filled  the  air  of  the 
place  from  so  many  natural  and  artificial  bodies  of  fresh 
water  showed  itself  in  low  fevers,  which  were  not  so 
common  as  ague,  but  common  enough.  The  only  long 
sickness  that  my  boy  could  remember  was  intermittent 
fever,  which  seemed  to  last  many  weeks,  and  which  was 
a  kind  of  bewilderment  rather  than  a  torment.  When 
it  was  beginning  he  appeared  to  glide  down  the  stairs 
at  school  without  touching  the  steps  with  his  feet,  and 


236  A  boy's  town. 

afterwards  his  chief  trouble  was  in  not  knowing,  when 
he  slept,  whether  he  had  really  been  asleep  or  not.  But 
there  was  rich  compensation  for  this  mild  suffering  in 
the  affectionate  petting  which  a  sick  boy  always  gets 
from  his  mother  when  his  malady  takes  him  from  his 
rough  little  world  and  gives  him  back  helpless  to  her 
tender  arms  again.  Then  she  makes  everything  in  the 
house  yield  to  him ;  none  of  the  others  are  allowed  to 
tease  him  or  cross  him  in  the  slightest  thing.  They 
have  to  walk  lightly ;  and  when  he  is  going  to  sleep,  if 
they  come  into  the  room,  they  have  got  to  speak  in  a 
whisper.  She  sits  by  his  bed  and  fans  him ;  she 
smooths  the  pillow  and  turns  its  cool  side  up  under  his 
hot  and  aching  head ;  she  cooks  dainty  dishes  to  tempt 
his  sick  appetite,  and  brings  them  to  him  herself.  She 
is  so  good  and  kind  and  loving  that  he  cannot  help  hav- 
ing some  sense  of  it  all,  and  feeling  how  much  better 
she  is  than  anything  on  earth.  His  little  ruffian  world 
drifts  far  away  from  him.  He  hears  the  yells  and  shouts 
of  the  boys  in  the  street  without  a  pang  of  envy  or  long- 
ing ;  in  his  weakness,  his  helplessness,  he  becomes  e 
gentle  and  innocent  child  again ;  and  heaven  descends 
to  him  out  of  his  mother's  heart. 


XXL 

LAST   DAYS. 

I  have  already  told  that  my  boy's  father  would  not 
support  General  Taylor,  the  Whig  candidate  for  Presi- 
dent, because  he  believed  him,  as  the  hero  of  a  pro- 
slavery  war,  to  be  a  friend  of  slavery.  At  this  time  he 
had  a  large  family  of  little  children,  and  he  had  got 
nothing  beyond  a  comfortable  living  from  the  news- 
paper which  he  had  published  for  eight  years ;  if  he 
must  give  that  up,  he  must  begin  life  anew  heavily 
burdened.  Perhaps  he  thought  it  need  not  come  to  his 
giving  up  his  paper,  that  somehow  affairs  might  change, 
lint  his  newspaper  would  have  gone  to  nothing  in  his 
hands  if  he  had  tried  to  publish  it  as  a  Free  Soil  paper 
after  the  election  of  the  Whig  candidate ;  so  he  sold  it, 
and  began  to  cast  about  for  some  other  business ;  how 
anxiously,  my  boy  was  too  young  to  know.  He  only 
felt  the  relief  that  the  whole  family  felt  for  a  while  at 
getting  out  of  the  printing  business ;  the  boys  wanted 
to  go  into  almost  anything  else :  the  drug-business,  or 
farming,  or  a  paper-mill,  or  anything.  The  elder  broth- 
er knew  all  the  anxiety  of  the  time,  and  shared  it  fully 
with  the  mother,  whose  acquiescence  in  what  the  father 
thought  right  was  more  than  patient ;  she  abode  cour- 
ageously in  the  suspense,  the  uncertainty  of  the  time ; 
and  she  hoped  for  something  from  the  father's  endeav- 
ors in  the  different  ways  he  turned.     At  one  time  there 


238  A   BOY'S   TOWN. 

was  much  talk  in  the  family  of  using  the  fibre  of  a  com- 
mon weed  in  making  paper,  which  he  thought  he  could 
introduce  ;  perhaps  it  was  the  milk-weed  ;  but  he  could 
not  manage  it,  somehow  ;  and  after  a  year  of  inaction  he 
decided  to  go  into  another  newspaper.  By  this  time  the 
boys  had  made  their  peace  with  the  printing  business,  and 
the  father  had  made  his  with  the  Whig  party.  He  had 
done  what  it  must  have  been  harder  to  do  than  to  stand  out 
against  it ;  he  had  publicly  owned  that  he  was  mistaken 
in  regard  to  Taylor,  who  had  not  become  the  tool  of  the 
slaveholders,  but  had  obeyed  the  highest  instincts  of  the 
party  and  served  the  interests  of  freedom,  though  he  was 
himself  a  slaveholder  and  the  hero  of  an  unjust  war. 

It  was  then  too  late,  however,  for  the  father  to  have 
got  back  his  old  newspaper,  even  if  he  had  wished,  and 
the  children  heard,  with  the  elation  that  novelty  brings 
to  all  children,  old  or  young,  that  they  were  going  away 
from  the  Boy's  Town,  to  live  in  another  place.  It  was 
a  much  larger  place  and  was  even  considered  a  city, 
though  it  was  not  comparable  to  Cincinnati,  so  long  the 
only  known  city  in  the  world. 

My  boy  was  twelve  years  old  by  that  time,  and  was 
already  a  swift  compositor,  though  he  was  still  so  small 
that  he  had  to  stand  on  a  chair  to  reach  the  case  in  set- 
ting type  on  Taylor's  inaugural  message.  But  what  he 
lacked  in  stature  he  made  up  in  gravity  of  demeanor ; 
and  he  got  the  name  of  "  The  Old  Man  "  from  the  print- 
ers as  soon  as  he  began  to  come  about  the  office,  which 
he  did  almost  as  soon  as  he  could  walk.  His  first  at- 
tempt in  literature,  an  essay  on  the  vain  and  disappoint- 
ing nature  of  human  life,  he  set  up  and  printed  off  him- 
self in  his  sixth  or  seventh  year  ;  and  the  printing-office 
was  in  some  sort  his  home,  as  well  as  his  school,  his 


LAST   DATS.  239 

university.  He  could  no  more  remember  learning  to 
set  type  than  lie  could  remember  learning  to  read ;  and 
in  after-life  lie  could  not  come  within  smell  of  the  ink, 
the  dusty  types,  the  humid  paper,  of  a  printing-office 
without  that  tender  swelling  of  the  heart  which  so  fond- 
ly responds  to  any  memory-bearing  perfume  :  his  youth, 
his  boyhood,  almost  his  infancy  came  back  to  him  in  it. 
He  now  looked  forward  eagerly  to  helping  on  the  new 
paper,  and  somewhat  proudly  to  living  in  the  larger 
place  the  family  were  going  to.  The  moment  it  was 
decided  he  began  to  tell  the  boys  that  he  was  going  to 
live  in  a  city,  and  he  felt  that  it  gave  him  distinction. 
He  had  nothing  but  joy  in  it,  and  he  did  not  dream 
that  as  the  time  drew  near  it  could  be  sorrow.  But 
when  it  came  at  last,  and  he  was  to  leave  the  house, 
the  town,  the  boys,  he  found  himself  deathly  home- 
sick. The  parting  days  were  days  of  gloom ;  the  part- 
ing was  an  anguish  of  bitter  tears.  Nothing  consoled 
him  but  the  fact  that  they  were  going  all  the  way  to 
the  new  place  in  a  canal-boat,  which  his  father  char- 
tered for  the  trip.  My  boy  and  his  brother  had  once 
gone  to  Cincinnati  in  a  canal-boat,  with  a  friendly  cap- 
tain of  their  acquaintance,  and,  though  they  were  both 
put  to  sleep  in  a  berth  so  narrow  that  when  they  turned 
they  fell  out  on  the  floor,  the  glory  of  the  adventure  re- 
mained with  him,  and  he  could  have  thought  of  noth- 
ing more  delightful  than  such  another  voyage.  The 
household  goods  were  piled  up  in  the  middle  of  the 
boat,  and  the  family  had  a  cabin  forward,  which  seemed 
immense  to  the  children.  They  played  in  it  and  ran 
races  up  and  down  the  long  canal-boat  roof,  where  their 
father  and  mother  sometimes  put  their  chairs  and  sat 
to  admire  the  scenery. 


240  A   BOY'S   TOWN. 

As  my  boy  could  remember  very  few  incidents  of 
this  voyage  afterwards,  I  dare  say  he  spent  a  great  part 
of  it  with  his  face  in  a  book,  and  was  aware  of  the 
landscape  only  from  time  to  time  when  he  lifted  his 
eyes  from  the  story  he  was  reading.  That  was  apt  to 
be  the  way  with  him ;  and  before  he  left  the  Boy's 
Town  the  world  within  claimed  him  more  and  more. 
He  ceased  to  be  that  eager  comrade  he  had  once  been ; 
sometimes  he  left  his  book  with  a  sigh ;  and  he  saw 
much  of  the  outer  world  through  a  veil  of  fancies  quiv- 
ering like  an  autumn  haze  between  him  and  its  reali- 
ties, softening  their  harsh  outlines,  and  giving  them  a 
fairy  coloring.  I  think  he  would  sometimes  have  been 
better  employed  in  looking  directly  at  them ;  but  he 
had  to  live  his  own  life,  and  I  cannot  live  it  over  for 
him.  The  season  was  the  one  of  all  others  best  fitted 
to  win  him  to  the  earth,  and  in  a  measure  it  did.  It 
was  spring,  and  along  the  towpath  strutted  the  large, 
glossy  blackbirds  which  had  just  come  back,  and  made 
the  boys  sick  with  longing  to  kill  them,  they  offered 
such  good  shots.  But  the  boys  had  no  powder  with 
them,  and  at  any  rate  the  captain  would  not  have  stopped 
his  boat,  which  was  rushing  on  at  the  rate  of  two  miles 
an  hour,  to  let  them  pick  up  a  bird,  if  they  had  hit  it. 
They  were  sufficiently  provisioned  without  the  game, 
however;  the  mother  had  baked  bread,  and  boiled  a 
ham,  and  provided  sugar-cakes  in  recognition  of  the 
holiday  character  of  the  voyage,  and  they  had  the  use 
of  the  boat  cooking-stove  for  their  tea  and  coffee.  The 
boys  had  to  content  themselves  with  such  sense  of  ad- 
venture as  they  could  get  out  of  going  ashore  when  the 
boat  was  passing  through  the  locks,  or  staying  aboard 
and  seeing  the  water  burst  and  plunge  in  around  the 


LAST   DAYS.  241 

boat.  They  had  often  watched  this  thrilling  sight  at 
the  First  Lock,  but  it  had  a  novel  interest  now.  As  their 
boat  approached  the  lock,  the  lower  gates  were  pushed 
open  by  men  who  set  their  breasts  to  the  long  sweeps 
or  handles  of  the  gates,  and  when  the  boat  was  fairly 
inside  of  the  stone -walled  lock  they  were  closed  be- 
hind her.  Then  the  upper  gates,  which  opened  against 
the  dull  current,  and  were  kept  shut  by  its  pressure, 
were  opened  a  little,  and  the  waters  rushed  and  roared 
into  the  lock,  and  began  to  lift  the  boat.  The  gates 
were  opened  wider  and  wider,  till  the  waters  poured 
a  heavy  cataract  into  the  lock,  where  the  boat  tossed 
on  their  increasing  volume,  and  at  last  calmed  them- 
selves to  the  level  within.  Then  the  boat  passed  out 
through  the  upper  gates,  on  even  water,  and  the  voyage 
to  the  next  lock  began.  At  first  it  was  rather  awful,  and 
the  little  children  were  always  afraid  when  they  came  to 
a  lock,  but  the  boys  enjoyed  it  after  the  first  time. 
They  would  have  liked  to  take  turns  driving  the  pair  of 
horses  that  drew  the  boat,  but  it  seemed  too  bold  a 
wish,  and  I  think  they  never  proposed  it ;  they  did  not 
ask,  either,  to  relieve  the  man  at  the  helm. 

They  arrived  safely  at  their  journey's  end,  without 
any  sort  of  accident.  They  had  made  the  whole  forty 
miles  in  less  than  two  days,  and  were  all  as  well  as 
when  they  started,  without  having  suffered  for  a  moment 
from  seasickness.  The  boat  drew  up  at  the  tow-path 
just  before  the  stable  belonging  to  the  house  which 
the  father  had  already  taken,  and  the  whole  family  at 
once  began  helping  the  crew  put  the  things  ashore. 
The  boys  thought  it  would  have  been  a  splendid  stable 
to  keep  the  pony  in,  only  they  had  sold  the  pony ;  but 
thev  saw  in  an  instant  that  it  would  do  for  a  circus  as 


242  A    BOY7S   TOWN. 

soon  as  they  could  get  acquainted  with  enough  boys 
to  have  one. 

The  strangeness  of  the  house  and  street,  and  the 
necessity  of  meeting  the  hoys  of  the  neighborhood,  and 
paying  with  his  person  for  his  standing  among  them, 
kept  my  boy  interested  for  a  time,  and  he  did  not  real- 
ize  at  first  how  much  he  missed  the  Boy's  Town  and 
all  the  familiar  fellowships  there,  and  all  the  manifold 
privileges  of  the  place.  Then  he  began  to  be  very 
homesick,  and  to  be  torn  with  the  torment  of  a  divided 
love.  His  mother,  whom  he  loved  so  dearly,  so  ten- 
derly, was  here,  and  wherever  she  was,  that  was  home ; 
and  yet  home  was  yonder,  far  off,  at  the  end  of  those 
forty  inexorable  miles,  where  he  had  left  his  life-long 
mates.  The  first  months  there  was  a  dumb  heartache 
at  the  bottom  of  every  pleasure  and  excitement.  There 
were  many  excitements,  not  the  least  of  which  was  the 
excitement  of  helping  get  out  a  tri-weekly  and  then  a 
daily  newspaper,  instead  of  the  weekly  that  his  father 
had  published  in  the  Boy's  Town.  Then  that  dear 
friend  of  his  brother  and  himself,  the  apprentice  who 
knew  all  about  "  Monte  Cristo,"  came  to  work  with 
them  and  live  with  them  again,  and  that  was  a  great 
deal ;  but  he  did  not  bring  the  Boy's  Town  with  him ; 
and  when  they  each  began  to  write  a  new  historical  ro- 
mance, the  thought  of  the  beloved  scenes  amidst  which 
they  had  planned  their  first  was  a  pang  that  nothing 
could  assuage.  During  the  summer  the  cholera  came  ; 
the  milkman,  though  naturally  a  cheerful  person,  said 
that  the  people  around  where  he  lived  were  dying  off 
like  flies  ;  and  the  funerals,  three  and  four,  five  and  six, 
ten  and  twelve  a  day,  passed  before  the  door ;  and  all 
the  brooding  horror  of  the  pestilence  sank  deep  into 


LAST  DATS.  243 

the  boy's  morbid  soul.  Then  he  fell  sick  of  the  cholera 
himself ;  and,  though  it  was  a  mild  attack,  he  lay  in 
the  Valley  of  the  Shadow  of  Death  while  it  lasted,  and 
waited  the  worst  with  such  terror  that  when  he  kept 
asking  her  if  he  should  get  well,  his  mother  tried  to 
reason  with  him,  and  to  coax  him  out  of  his  fear.  Was 
he  afraid  to  die,  she  asked  him,  when  he  knew  that 
heaven  was  so  much  better,  and  he  would  be  in  the 
care  of  such  love  as  never  could  come  to  him  on  earth? 
He  could  only  gasp  back  that  he  was  afraid  to  die  ;  and 
she  could  only  turn  from  reconciling  him  with  the  other 
world  to  assuring  him  that  he  was  in  no  danger  of  leav- 
ing this. 

I  sometimes  think  that  if  parents  would  deal  rightly 
and  truly  with  children  about  death  from  the  beginning, 
some  of  the  fear  of  it  might  be  taken  away.  It  seems 
to  me  that  it  is  partly  because  death  is  hushed  up  and 
ignored  between  them  that  it  rests  such  a  burden  on 
the  soul ;  but  if  children  were  told  as  soon  as  they  are 
old  enough  that  death  is  a  part  of  nature,  and  not  a 
calamitous  accident,  they  would  be  somewhat  strength- 
ened to  meet  it.  My  boy  had  been  taught  that  this 
world  was  only  an  illusion,  a  shadow  thrown  from  the 
real  world  beyond ;  and  no  doubt  his  father  and  mother 
believed  what  they  taught  him ;  but  he  had  always 
seen  them  anxious  to  keep  the  illusion,  and  in  his  turn 
he  clung  to  the  vain  shadow  with  all  the  force  of  his 
being. 

He  got  well  of  the  cholera,  but  not  of  the  homesick- 
ness, and  after  a  while  he  was  allowed  to  revisit  the 
Boy's  Town.  It  could  only  have  been  three  or  four 
months  after  he  had  left  it,  but  it  already  seemed  a  very 
long  time ;  and  he  figured  himself  returning  as  stage- 


244  A  boy's  town. 

heroes  do  to  the  scenes  of  their  childhood,  after  an  ab- 
sence of  some  fifteen  years.  He  fancied  that  if  the 
hoys  did  not  find  him  grown,  they  would  find  him  some- 
how changed,  and  that  he  would  dazzle  them  with  the 
light  accumulated  by  his  residence  in  a  city.  He  was 
going  to  stay  with  his  grandmother,  and  he  planned  to 
make  a  long  stay ;  for  he  was  very  fond  of  her,  and  he 
liked  the  quiet  and  comfort  of  her  pleasant  house.  He 
must  have  gone  back  by  the  canal-packet,  but  his  mem- 
ory kept  no  record  of  the  fact,  and  afterwards  he  knew 
only  of  having  arrived,  and  of  searching  about  in  a 
ghostly  fashion  for  his  old  comrades.  They  may  have 
been  at  school ;  at  any  rate  he  found  very  few  of  them  ; 
and  with  them  he  was  certainly  strange  enough ;  too 
strange,  even.  They  received  him  with  a  kind  of  sur- 
prise ;  and  they  could  not  begin  playing  together  at 
once  in  the  old  way.  He  went  to  all  the  places  that 
were  so  dear  to  him  ;  but  he  felt  in  them  the  same  kind 
of  refusal,  or  reluctance,  that  he  felt  in  the  boys.  His 
heart  began  to  ache  again,  he  did  not  quite  know  why  ; 
only  it  ached.  When  he  went  up  from  his  grand- 
mother's to  look  at  the  Faulkner  house,  he  realized  that 
it  was  no  longer  home,  and  he  could  not  bear  the  sight 
of  it.  There  were  other  people  living  in  it ;  strange 
voices  sounded  from  the  open  doors,  strange  faces 
peered  from  the  windows. 

He  came  back  to  his  grandmother's,  bruised  and  de- 
feated, and  spent  the  morning  indoors  reading.  After 
dinner  he  went  out  again,  and  hunted  up  that  queer  earth- 
spirit  who  had  been  so  long  and  closely  his  only  friend. 
He  at  least  was  not  changed ;  he  was  as  unwashed  and 
as  unkempt  as  ever ;  but  he  seemed  shy  of  my  poor 
boy.     He  had  probably  never  been  shaken  hands  with 


LAST  DAYS.  245 

in  his  life  before  ;  he  dropped  my  boy's  hand  ;  and  they 
stood  looking  at  each  other,  not  knowing  what  to  say. 
My  boy  had  on  his  best  clothes,  which  he  wore  so  as 
to  affect  the  Boy's  Town  boys  with  the  full  splendor 
of  a  city  boy.  After  all,  he  was  not  so  very  splendid, 
but  his  presence  altogether  was  too  much  for  the  earth- 
spirit,  and  he  vanished  out  of  his  consciousness  like  an 
apparition. 

After  school  was  out  in  the  afternoon,  he  met  more 
of  the  boys,  but  none  of  them  knew  just  what  to 
do  with  him.  The  place  that  he  had  once  had  in 
their  lives  was  filled ;  he  was  an  outsider,  who  might 
be  suffered  among  them,  but  he  was  no  longer  of  them. 
He  did  not  understand  this  at  once,  nor  well  know 
what  hurt  him.  But  something  was  gone  that  could 
not  be  called  back,  something  lost  that  could  not  be 
found. 

At  tea-time  his  grandfather  came  home  and  gravely 
made  him  welcome ;  the  uncle  who  was  staying  with 
them  was  jovially  kind.  But  a  heavy  homesickness 
weighed  down  the  child's  heart,  which  now  turned  from 
the  Boy's  Town  as  longingly  as  it  had  turned  towards 
it  before. 

They  all  knelt  down  with  the  grandfather  before  they 
went  to  the  table.  There  had  been  a  good  many  deaths 
from  cholera  during  the  day,  and  the  grandfather  prayed 
for  grace  and  help  amidst  the  pestilence  that  walketh 
in  darkness  and  wasteth  at  noonday  in  such  a  way  that 
the  boy  felt  there  would  be  very  little  of  either  for  him 
unless  he  got  home  at  once.  All  through  the  meal  that 
followed  he  was  trying  to  find  the  courage  to  say  that 
he  must  go  home.  When  he  managed  to  say  it,  his 
grandmother  and  aunt  tried  to  comfort  and  coax  him, 


246  A  boy's  TOWN. 

and  his  uncle  tried  to  shame  him,  out  of  his  homesick- 
ness, to  joke  it  off,  to  make  him  laugh.  But  his  grand- 
father's tender  heart  was  moved.  He  could  not  endure 
the  child's  mute  misery ;  he  said  he  must  go  home  if 
he  wished. 

In  half  an  hour  the  boy  was  on  the  canal-packet 
speeding  homeward  at  the  highest  pace  of  the  three- 
horse  team,  and  the  Boy's  Town  was  out  of  sight.  He 
could  not  sleep  for  excitement  that  night,  and  he  came 
and  spent  the  time  talking  on  quite  equal  terms  with 
the  steersman,  one  of  the  canalers  whom  he  had  ad- 
mired afar  in  earlier  and  simpler  days.  He  found  him 
a  very  amiable  fellow,  by  no  means  haughty,  who  began 
to  tell  him  funny  stories,  and  who  even  let  him  take 
the  helm  for  a  while.  The  rudder-handle  was  of  pol- 
ished iron,  very  different  from  the  clumsy  wooden  affair 
of  a  freight-boat ;  and  the  packet  made  in  a  single  night 
the  distance  which  the  boy's  family  had  been  nearly  two 
days  in  travelling  when  they  moved  away  from  the  Boy's 
Town. 

He  arrived  home  for  breakfast  a  travelled  and  expe- 
rienced person,  and  wholly  cured  of  that  longing  for 
his  former  home  that  had  tormented  him  before  he  re- 
visited its  scenes.  He  now  fully  gave  himself  up  to 
his  new  environment,  and  looked  forward  and  not  back- 
ward. I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  he  ceased  to  love 
the  Boy's  Town ;  that  he  could  not  do  and  never  did. 
But  he  became  more  and  more  aware  that  the  past  was 
gone  from  him  forever,  and  tbat  he  could  not  return  to 
it.  He  did  not  forget  it,  but  cherished  its  memories 
the  more  fondly  for  that  reason. 

There  was  no  bitterness  in  it,  and  no  harm  that  he 
could  not  hope  would  easily  be  forgiven  him.     He  had 


LAST   DATS.  247 

often  been  foolish,  and  sometimes  he  had  been  wicked ; 
but  he  had  never  been  such  a  little  fool  or  such  a  little 
sinner  but  he  had  wished  for  more  sense  and  more 
grace.  There  are  some  great  fools  and  great  sinners 
who  try  to  believe  in  after-life  that  they  are  the  man- 
lier men  because  they  have  been  silly  and  mischievous 
boys,  but  he  has  never  believed  that.  He  is  glad  to  have 
had  a  boyhood  fully  rounded  out  with  all  a  boy's  inter- 
ests and  pleasures,  and  he  is  glad  that  his  lines  were 
cast  in  the  Boy's  Town ;  but  he  knows,  or  believes  he 
knows,  that  whatever  is  good  in  him  now  came  from 
what  was  good  in  him  then ;  and  he  is  sure  that  the 
town  was  delightful  chiefly  because  his  home  in  it  was 
happy.  The  town  was  small  and  the  boys  there  were 
hemmed  in  by  their  inexperience  and  ignorance ;  but 
the  simple  home  was  large  with  vistas  that  stretched 
to  the  ends  of  the  earth,  and  it  was  serenely  bright 
with  a  father's  reason  and  warm  with  a  mother's  love. 


THE    END. 


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